Srom  f  0e  feifirarg  of 


(profeeeor  ^tffiam  J^tnr^  (Breen 

f £t6rarg  of 
(Princeton  ^^eofogicaf  ^emtnarj 

BX  5199    .S8  E'T 1894  v. 2 
Ernie,  Rowland  Edmund 

Prothero,  1852-1937. 
The  life  and  correspondence 

of  Arthur  PenrhvrL  Stanley 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 
in  2015 


https://arcliive.org/details/lifecorresponden02ernl_0 


ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY 


VOL.  II. 


THE  LIFE  AND  CORRESPONDENCE 


OF 


Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanle 


LATE  DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER 


BY  / 

ROWLAND  E.  PROTHERO, 'm.a!^ 

BARRISTER-AT-LAW,  LATE  FELLOW  OF  ALL  SOULS  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


With  the  Co-operation  and  Sanction  of  the 

VERY  REV.  G.  G.  BRADLEY,  D.D. 

DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER 


WITH  PORTRAITS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS 


VOL.  II 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
MDCCCXCIV 


Copyright,  1893,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


[All  rights  reserved'^ 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XVI 
1858-61 

PAGE 

First  Impressions  of  Oxford  after  his  return  —  Tour  in  Spain  —  Revived 
Interest  in  Oxford  —  'Canterbury  Sermons'  —  His  Influence  as  Pro- 
fessor of  Ecclesiastical  History  —  St.  George's-in-the-East  —  'Essays 
and  Reviews'  .......  I 


CHAPTER  XVII 
1859-62 

Tour  in  Denmark  —  Ober-Ammergau  —  Publication  of  'The  Eastern 
Church  '  —  Mount  Athos  —  Death  of  the  Prince  Consort  —  Invitation 
to  accompany  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  the  East         .  .  -45 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

February-June  1862 

Second  Tour  in  the  East —  Sunday  at  Cairo  with  the  Prince  of  Wales  — 
The  Nile  —  Karnak  —  Dendera — Death  of  Mrs.  Stanley  —  Entry 
into  Jerusalem  —  Bethany  —  The  Mosque  of  Hebron  —  The  Samar- 
itan Passover — The  Shores  of  Lake  Tiberias  —  Tent-life  in  Pales- 
tine—  The  Cedars  of  Lebanon         .  .  .  .  .66 


CHAPTER  XIX 

1862-63 

"The  Death  of  General  Bruce  —  The  Blank  in  Stanley's  Life  left  by  his 
Mother's  Death  —  Rumours  of  Preferment  —  Colenso  on  the  Penta- 
teuch —  Publication  of  the  First  Part  of  his  Lectures  on  the  '  History 
of  the  Jewish  Church '  —  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  London  on  Sub- 
scription —  Growing  Intimacy  with  the  Royal  Family  —  Publication 
of  the  '  Sermons  in  the  East '  .....  92 

V 


vi 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XX 
August-December  1863 

PAGE 

Thoughts  of  Marriage  —  Prospects  of  Preferment  —  Tour  in  Italy  —  En- 
gagement to  Lady  Augusta  Bruce  —  Acceptance  of  the  Deanery  of 
Westminster  —  Sermon  on  '  Great  Opportunities '  —  Marriage  —  In- 
stallation as  Dean      .  .  .  .  .  .  .    1 29 

CHAPTER  XXI 
1864-74 

Final  Judgment  on  'Essays  and  Reviews,'  February  1864 — Refusal  of 
High  Church  Leaders  to  preach  in  Westminster  Abbey  —  Stanley's 
Attitude  towards  Theological  and  Ecclesiastical  Controversies  — 
'Essays  on  Church  and  State,'  1870  —  Speeches  in  Convocation  on 
'  Essays  and  Reviews,'  on  Bishop  Colenso,  on  Ritualism,  on  the 
Public  Worship  Regulation  Bill,  on  the  Revision  of  the  Authorised 
Version,  on  the  Athanasian  Creed  —  The  Pan-Anglican  Synod  and 
Westminster  Abbey,  1867  —  Dr.  Vance  Smith,  1870  —  Select  Preach- 
ership  at  Oxford,  1872  .         .  .  .         .  •  ^SS 

CHAPTER  XXII 
1864-74 

Stanley's  Literary  Work  —  Its  Amount,  Variety,  and  Freshness  —  Its 
Unity  of  Aim  —  'The  Theology  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,'  1864  — 
The  Second  Part  of  the  '  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish 
Church,'  1865  —  Review  of  '  Ecce  Homo,'  1866  —  'Memorials  of 
Westminster  Abbey,'  1867  —  'Connection  of  Church  and  State,' 
1868  —  'The  Three  Irish  Churches,'  1869  — '  Essays  on  Church  and 
State,'  1870  —  'Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,' 
1872  .........  236 

CHAPTER  XXIII 
1864-81 

Stanley's  Administration  of  Westminster  Abbey  —  His  Incapacity  for 
Business — His  Love  and  Care  for  the  Building  —  His  Choice  of 
Select  Preachers  —  His  Offer  of  the  Abbey  Pulpit  to  Dr.  Colenso, 
1874  —  Mission  Lectures  in  the  Nave,  1872-79  —  Bach's  Passion 
Music,  1871-72  —  Services  for  Children,  1871-81 — Saturday-After- 
noon Services,  1 88 1  —  Distinguished  Visitors  to  the  Abbey  —  The 
Choir  opened  to  the  Public  gratuitously  —  Parties  of  Working  Men 
conducted  over  Westminster — Stanley's  Gifts  as  a  Preacher  —  Inter- 
ments in  the  Abbey,  1864-81  — P'uneral  of  Charles  Dickens,  1870  — 
Proposed  Monument  to  the  Prince  Imperial,  1879-80  .  .  278 


CONTENTS 


vn 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
1864-70 

PAGE 

Domestic  and  Social  Life  —  Regrets  for  Oxford  —  Letters  to  his  Wife  — 
Foreign  Tour  in  1864  —  'The  Waters  Tragedy'  —  Interview  with 
Newman —  Love  for  Westminster  Abbey — Domestic  Happiness — His 
Daily  Life  at  Westminster —  Foreign  Tour  in  1865  —  Visit  to  Bishop 
Thirlwall —  Funeral  of  Lord  Palmerston  —  Vallombrosa  in  1866  —  In- 
terview with  Pope  Pius  IX.  —  Dupanloup  —  Discovery  of  Original  MS. 
of  Prayer  Book  of  1662  —  Foreign  Tour  in  1867  — Thiers  —  Death  of 
Dean  Milman,  1 868  — Foreign  Tour  in  1868  —  The  Prussian  Royal 
Family — The  Vatican  Council,  1869  —  Pere  Hyacinthe  and  Dr.  D61- 
linger  —  Consecration  of  Dr.  Temple,  December  21st,  1869 — Corre- 
spondence with  the  Rev.  C.  Voysey     .  .  .  .  -331 

CHAPTER  XXV 
1870-73 

Stanley's  Speech  at  the  Dinner  given  to  Archbishop  Lycurgus  —  The 
Outbreak  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War  —  Stanley's  Love  of  Scotland 
and  of  Walter  Scott  —  His  Friendship  with  the  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews 

—  His  Gift  of  Verse-writing  —  His  Visit  to  Sedan  — The  Old  Catholic 
Congress  at  Munich,  1871  — The  Illness  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  1871- 
72 — The  Marriage  of  Pere  Hyacinthe — The  Old  Catholic  Congress 
at  Cologne,  1872  —  Death  of  Merle  d'Aubigne  —  Lamartine's  Poetry 

—  Monte  Generoso  —  The  Queen's  Request  that  Stanley  should  per- 
form the  Protestant  Ceremony  at  St.  Petersburg  on  the  Occasion  of 

the  Marriage  of  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh         .  .  .381 

CHAPTER  XXVI 
1874-76 

The  Wedding  of  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  at  St.  Petersburg — Stanley's 
Part  in  the  Ceremony —  His  Reception  in  Russia  —  Lord  Beaconsfield 
at  Marlborough  House  and  Westminster  Abbey  —  The  Persecuted 
Russian  Baptists  —  Stanley  and  Mrs.  Annie  Besant  —  Lady  Augusta 
Stanley's  Illness  at  Paris  —  Stanley's  Addresses  as  Lord  Rector  of  St. 
Andrews  —  The  Alarming  State  of  his  Wife's  Health —  Fluctuations 
of  Hope  and  Fear  —  Her  Death  on  March  ist,  1876  .  .  422 

CHAPTER  XXVII 
1876-80 

The  Effect  upon  Stanley  of  his  Wife's  Death  —  The  Third  Volume  of 
'Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish  Church'  —  Tour  in  Portugal, 
1876 —  Renewal  of  his  Work  at  Westminster  under  changed  Condi- 
VOL.  II  A 


viii 


CONTENTS 


tions  —  His  Daily  Life  —  His  Literary  Worlc — The  Queen's  Assump- 
tion of  the  Imperial  Title — The  Eastern  Question  —  The  Death  of 
Victor  Emanuel  and  Tio  Nono,  1878  —  The  Burials  Bill,  1877  —  The 
Scottish  Church  and  Mr.  Gladstone  —  Lectures,  Addresses,  and  Ser- 
mons —  Deaths  of  Mr.  Motley,  Miss  Louisa  Stanley,  Sir  Gilbert  Scott, 
the  Duchess  of  Argyll,  Mr.  Russell  Gurney,  and  Earl  Russell  —  Visit 
to  America,  1878  —  Its  Success  —  'Memoir  of  Edward  and  Catherine 
Stanley,'  1879  —  Tour  in  Italy,  1879  —  Death  of  Mary  Stanley,  1879  475 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 
1880-81 

Despondency  and  Depression  —  Anxieties  in  1880  —  Tour  in  France, 
1880  —  'Christian  Institutions,'  March  i88i  — Its  Cold  Reception  — 
His  Interest  in  Public  Affairs  —  His  Sermons  on  the  Beatitudes  —  His 
Last  Illness — His  Death  and  Burial  .....  549 

Appendix  .........  575 

Index       .........  583 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN  VOL.  II 

Ladv  Augusta  Stanley  {from  a  Negative  in  the  Possession 

of  Her  Majesty  the  Queen)     ......  Frontispiece 

Arthur  Stanley  when  Regius  Professor  of  Ecclesias- 
tical History  at  Oxford  (from  a  Photograph  by  Hills 
cr"  Saunders  of  Oxford)  .......  to  face  p.  40 

The  Library,  Deanery,  Westminster       ....        "  237 

Dean  Stanley  at  Work  at  his  Desk  in  the  Deanery 

{from  a  Photograph  by  Samuel  B.  Walker)  ...         "  475 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


CHAPTER  XVI 
1858-61 

FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  OXFORD  AFTER  HIS  RETURN  — TOUR 
IN  SPAIN  —  REVIVED  INTEREST  IN  OXFORD —' CANTER- 
BURY SERMONS '  —  HIS  INFLUENCE  AS  PROFESSOR  OF 
ECCLESIASTICAL  HISTORY  — ST.  GEORGES-IN-THE-EAST — 
'ESSAYS  AND  REVIEWS' 

'To-morrow,'  writes  Stanley  to  Charles  Kingsley  on 
April  13th,  1858,  on  the  eve  of  leaving  Canterbury, 

'  I  leave  a  home  which  I  have  enjoyed  increasingly  for 
seven  years,  to  enter  on  a  life  of  turmoil  and  confine- 
ment, which  derives  its  only  charm  from  the  hope,  at  times 
very  faint,  of  being  more  useful  than  I  have  been  here. 
Such  a  hope  is  revived  by  finding  that  my  lectures  have 
awakened  a  response  from  anyone  so  well  able  to  judge  of 
ecclesiastical  history  as  you  are.  I  wish  that  I  knew  any 
one  generation  as  you  know  that  of  Hypatia,  or  of  Eliza- 
beth (of  either  Hungary  or  England).' 

Less  than  a  year  elapsed  before  he  was  completely  re- 
conciled to  the  change.  In  February  1859  he  visited 
Canterbury  in  order  to  preach  a  sermon  on  the  death  of 
the  Rector  of  St.  Martin-with-St.  Paul,  Canon  Chesshyre, 
who  had  succeeded  to  his  stall  in  the  Cathedral.  '  It  has 
been,'  he  writes  to  Pearson, 


'  very  melancholy  to  me  in  more  ways  than  one.    First,  it 
VOL.  11  B 


2 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1858 


was  sad  to  think  of  such  a  very  useful  life  as  was  Ches- 
shyre's,  so  unmixedly,  unblamably  useful,  thus  cut  short. 
I  had  a  real,  deep  regard  for  him.  He  was  so  natural,  so 
comprehensive,  such  a  true  offspring  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. I  preached  to  the  afternoon  congregation  in  the 
Cathedra],  and  to  his  own  parish  in  the  evening  —  both 
enormous,  in  the  Cathedral  reaching  up  to  the  altar-steps. 
But  oh  !  my  dear  H.  P.,  what  was  more  sad  to  me  than 
anything  was  the  feeling  of  how  the  whole  place  had  faded 
away  from  me.  A  merciful  dispensation  !  but  it  seems  to 
imply  such  a  hoUowness  in  one's  affections  that,  in  one 
short  year,  all  those  passionate  regrets  should  have  been 
buried,  and  a  new  home  sprung  up,  and  no  wish  to  return.' 

Yet  Oxford  was  not  a  bed  of  roses.  In  the  University 
party  spirit  ran  high,  and  was  especially  directed  against 
one  of  his  two  dearest  and  most  intimate  friends.  In  the 
Cathedral  Chapter  elements  of  discord  continually  disturbed 
the  harmony  of  the  governing  body.  'This  morning  at 
Chapter,'  he  tells  his  mother,  within  a  few  weeks  of  his 
installation  as  Canon, 

*a  discussion  arose  about  the  former  mode  of  services  in 
Christ  Church  Cathedral.  "  I  stated  the  fact  to  be  so," 
said  Pusey,  who  was  sitting  by  Ogilvie,  "  in  preaching  be- 
fore the  University."  "  Can  you  refer  to  it .'' "  asked  Jacobson. 
"  It  was  in  my  condemned  sermon,"  replied  Pusey.  I  could 
not  help  stealing  a  glance  at  Ogilvie,  who  was  one  of  the 
judges  that  condemned  the  sermon.  You  can  imagine  the 
black  thundercloud.  It  burst  afterwards  in  another  direc- 
tion. Another  discussion  arose  about  the  income  of  the 
College  property.  "  We  shall  only  be  laying  up  stores  for 
the  rapacionsiiess  of  future  Commissioners."  Certainly  the 
Chapter  here  contains  very  explosive  elements.' 

Nor  did  he  at  once  succeed  in  awakening  such  a  re- 
sponse among  his  pupils  as  he  had  at  first  expected.  In 
a  letter  to  J.  C.  Shairp  he  enlarges  upon  his  Oxford  expe- 
riences : 

'  Let  me  begin  with  its  sours.  The  dusty,  secular, 
dried-up  aspect  of  the  place  is  very  unpleasing.    The  stiff- 


CHAP.  XVI  OXFORD  IMPRESSIONS 


3 


ness  of  the  undergraduates  in  social  intercourse  is  only 
surpassed  by  their  marvellous  lack  of  interest  (as  far  as 
appears  in  my  lectures)  in  anything  like  theological  study. 
I  am  curious,  if  ever  I  come  to  St.  Andrews  again,  to 
hear  or  see  how  the  Scotch  students  receive  their  instruc- 
tions. 

'  On  the  other  hand,  the  possession  of  a  house  makes 
me  independent  of  much  of  the  useless  gossip  and  rattle  of 
academical  machinery,  and  gives  me  a  hope  of  future  useful 
social  influences.  There  is  a  pleasure  in  finding  oneself  at 
the  top  of  the  tree,  as  far  as  any  wish  I  could  form  in  con- 
nection with  Oxford  —  everything  open  to  one's  view,  great 
persons  civil  and  kind,  small  persons  grateful  for  notice. 
Now  and  then,  too,  in  the  undergraduate  world  a  spark  of 
interest  seems  to  be  struck,  which  makes  one  hope  that, 
even  where  none  such  appears,  there  may  be  some  effect 
produced. 

'Of  the  Balliol  youth  I.  see  but  little.  None  of  them 
come  to  my  lectures,  which,  I  presume,  arises  from  the 
fact  that  none  of  them  go  into  Orders,  a  feature  in  the 
prospects  of  the  Church  of  England  far  darker  than  any  of 
those  about  which  our  agitators  and  alarmists  are  so  wild/ 

One  great  attraction  which  his  position  at  Oxford 
offered  to  him  was  the  Long  Vacation,  with  its  leisure  for 
study  or  for  travel.  In  the  solitude  of  the  University,  dur- 
ing the  greater  part  of  July  and  August,  1858,  he  was  busy 
preparing  his  October  lectures,  in  order  that  he  might  be 
free  for  an  expedition  to  the  north  of  Spain. 

'  I  am  monarch  of  all  I  survey, 

My  right  there  is  none  to  dispute. 
From  Peckwater  unto  St.  Aldates  ^ 
I  am  lord  of  the  fowl  and  the  brute ; 

i.e.  of  my  cockatoo  and  a  stray  dog  that  wanders  from  one 
quadrangle  to  another.' 

As  soon  as  his  work  was  completed  he  started  on 
August  30th,  1858,  for  the  Continent.  Leaving  his  mother 
at  Biarritz,  he  made  his  way  by  a  Spanish  steamer  from 

1  At  Oxford  St.  'Aldates'  is  pronounced  as  'St.  Olds.' 

B  2 


4 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Marseilles  to  Barcelona.  His  travelling  companion  was 
the  Rev.  North  Pinder,  an  old  Rugbeian,  and  then  a 
Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford. 

Stanley  had  already  visited  the  south  of  Spain  with  his 
sisters.  He  was  now  anxious  to  see  something  of  the 
northern  provinces  of  a  country  which  always  fascinated 
him  by  its  historical  and  Oriental  characteristics.  From 
Barcelona  he  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Montserrat,  where 
Ignatius  Loyola  dedicated  his  sword  to  the  black  image  of 
the  Virgin.  Then,  proceeding  down  the  east  coast  to 
Valencia,  he  traversed  the  bleak  desert,  dotted  here  and 
there  with  dusky  olives,  which  reaches  up  to  the  very  gates 
of  Madrid. 

The  treeless,  dusty,  idle,  extortionate  capital,  standing 
in  a  'hideous  situation,'  was  little  to  his  taste.  It  only 
excited  in  him  surprise  that,  merely  to  gratify  the  comfort 
of  the  gouty  Charles  V.  or  the  gloomy  humours  of 
Philip  II.,  the  old  metropolitan  glories  of  Grenada,  or 
Seville,  or  Toledo,  should  have  been  sacrificed.  In  the 
picture-galleries,  except  when  the  subjects  of  the  pictures 
were  historical  portraits,  or  illustrated  the  national  history 
or  character,  he  took  small  interest.  Yet  of  Murillo's 
genius  he  carried  away  a  very  vivid  impression.  '  His 
pictures  have  that  lively  art  of  telling  a  story  which 
always  pleases  me  so  much  in  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.'  With 
the  Armoury  he  was  delighted.  Here  he  could  see  the 
swords  of  Roland,  the  Cid  Campeador,  and  Boabdil,  of 
Pizarro,  and  Ferdinand  the  Catholic  ;  the  suit  of  mail  worn 
by  Columbus,  and  the  helmet  of  Charles  V.,  engraved  with 
the  motto,  '  Plus  ultra,'  which  he  was  fond  of  quoting.  His 
insatiable  curiosity  even  led  him  to  a  bull-fight.  Already, 
on  an  Easter  Sunday,  from  the  tower  of  the  Cathedral  at 
Seville,  he  had  seen  a  similar  spectacle.  The  bull-fight  at 
Madrid  was  held  on  a  Monday,  and  he  therefore  could  go 


CHAP.  XVI 


TOLEDO 


5 


to  the  actual  scene  with  a  clear  conscience.  '  I  was,'  he 
says, 

'quite  unable  to  feel  a  spark  of  excitement  either  for  bulls, 
fighters,  or  spectators.  The  death  of  the  poor  animals  was 
less  disgusting  than  I  had  expected.  But  there  was  a 
childishness  and  a  languor  about  the  whole  affair  that  made 
it  to  me  altogether  unmeaning  —  a  cruel  teasing  of  a  poor 
dumb  beast,  that  was  gradually  worn  out  by  exhaustion, 
and  then  butchered  without  difficulty.  I  never  desire  to 
see  or  to  think  of  it  again.' 

After  leaving  Madrid,  the  real  interest  of  the  tour  began 
for  Stanley.  The  Escurial,  Toledo,  Alcala,  Segovia,  Burgos, 
with  their  cathedrals,  their  universities,  their  churches,  their 
tombs  and  monasteries,  their  Roman  remains,  their  reminis- 
cences of  Spanish  sovereigns  from  Alonzo  VI.  to  Philip  II., 
of  the  Cid  and  Gil  Bias,  of  Cervantes  and  Ximenes,  richly 
repaid  him  for  the  weariness,  delays,  and  discomforts  of  his 
journey.  Toledo  formed  'the  climax  of  the  tour.'  Apart 
from  the  glories  of  the  Cathedral,  of  the  Convent  of  San 
Juan  de  los  Reyes,  or  of  the  Jewish  synagogue,  nothing 
could  surpass  the  beauty  of  the  situation.  His  description 
shows  how  keen  was  his  eye  for  natural  beauty  when  it 
formed  the  background  for  human  interest.    '  It  is,'  he  says, 

'the  walk  along  the  hills  behind  the  river  which  is  of  such 
extraordinary  grandeur.  What  a  contrast  to  the  flatness 
and  wretchedness  of  Madrid  and  the  Manzanares !  The 
wild,  savage,  mountain  scenery,  descending  almost  precipi- 
tously into  the  broad,  full  stream,  is  such  as  might  make 
you  think  yourself  far  away  from  town  or  history.  But 
then,  it  is  for  ever  opening  and  closing  upon  glimpses  of 
the  city,  which  appear  in  a  succession  of  stone-paved  pictures 
—  Moorish  bridge,  Roman  aqueduct,  Palace  of  Charles  V., 
Cathedral  spire,  Jewish  synagogue.  Church  of  the  Catholic 
Kings — a  solitary  group  of  women  washing  on  the  bare 
rocks  below,  a  watch-tower  on  the  hill,  a  troop  of  gipsies 
or  foresters  passing  over  the  mountain-track  with  their  laden 
asses ;  this  is  the  magic-lantern,  this  is  the  true  "Vision  of 


6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Don  Roderick,"  not  in  the  enchanted  cave,  but  on  the 
enchanted  mountain  and  beautiful  river  of  Toledo.' 

At  Burgos,  Stanley's  enthusiasm  for  the  Cid  triumphed 
over  sickness  and  fatigue.  At  the  tomb  of  the  Cid,  at  San 
Pedro  de  Cardena,  he  examined  every  nook  of  the  Chapel, 
every  line  of  the  elaborate  epitaph  in  Latin  hexameters, 
every  detail  of  the  sculptured  armour.  His  one  disappoint- 
ment was  that  his  guide  could  not  point  out  the  spot  where 
Babieca,  the  Cid's  faithful  war-horse,  was  buried,  so  decid- 
edly as  that  where  Roderick  and  Ximena  his  wife  were 
laid.  In  one  of  his  most  characteristic  letters  he  describes 
how  he  tracked  the  footsteps  of  the  Cid  from  the  first 
moment  that  he  entered  Spain  : 

'  I  first  fell  in  with  him  at  Valencia.  Little  enough 
remains  of  him,  but  the  inn  bears  his  name,  and  from  the 
top  of  the  Cathedral  tower  we  overlooked  the  same  view 
that  he,  after  he  had  taken  the  city  from  the  Moors,  showed 
to  his  wife  and  daughter  from  the  same  spot  —  the  distant 
sea,  the  city  rising  out  of  its  circle  of  verdure,  and  the 
desert  encompassing  it  on  the  side  of  the  land.  Next  in  the 
Armoury  of  Madrid  appeared  his  sword  —  one,  I  should 
rather  say,  of  his  two  swords  —  La  Colada.  It  could  not  be 
in  better  company,  for  not  far  off  was  Durandel,  and  the 
sword  of  Pelayo,  and  the  sword  of  the  Gran  Capitan. 
Next  we  heard  of  him  at  Toledo.  Our  good  guide  related 
the  scene  as  if  it  had  happened  yesterday.  "I  did  not  see 
it  myself,"  he  said,  "and  therefore  I  cannot  tell  whether  it  is 
true.  But  this  is  what  I  have  heard  in  the  histories.  When 
Alonzo  VI.  conquered  Toledo,  he  and  the  Campeador  rode 
up  through  the  Visagra  Gate.  Close  by  was  a  small 
mosque,  and  here  Alonzo  halted  to  return  thanksgiving  for 
his  victor}',  when  suddenly  the  Campeador's  horse  fell  on 
its  knees  before  the  wall.  They  opened  the  wall,  and  found 
there  a  crucifix,  which  the  Christians  had  walled-up  when 
the  Moors  came  in,  with  a  light  burning  before  it.  The 
crucifix  and  the  light  were  brought  into  the  mosque,  which 
is  now  '  Christo  de  la  Luz.'  " 

'  The  next  time  was  at  Segovia.  In  the  ancient  Castle 
(where  also  Gil  Bias  was  imprisoned)  is  a  hall  containing 


CHAP.  XVI 


CARDENA 


7 


effigies  of  the  Spanish  kings  during  the  whole  period  of 
the  Moorish  wars,  and  underneath  the  four  corners  are  the 
four  champions  who  upheld  the  Christian  cause.  Chief  of 
these,  I  need  not  say,  is  the  Cid. 

'  This  brings  me  to  his  last  resting-place,  his  birthplace 
and  his  burial-place  —  Burgos  and  Cardena.  On  the  steep 
side  of  the  hill  on  which  stands  Burgos  Castle  are  a  few 
broken  pillars,  standing  in  what  was  once  the  High  Street  — 
as  at  Edinburgh  —  where  the  aristocracy  of  Castile  resided 
under  the  shadow  of  their  great  castle.  Here  amongst  them 
dwelt  the  Cid.  .  .  .  There  he  was  born  and  died,  and  hard 
by  you  will  see  a  Moorish  archway,  to  remind  him  of  his 
country's  enemies.  But  now,  to  Cardena  let  us  go.  It  is  a 
wild  walk  of  five  miles  or  more  over  the  bleak  downs  of 
Castile,  fit  burial-place  for  the  wild  Castilian  hero.  It  is 
the  earliest  Benedictine  convent  in  Spain,  built  by  Sancha 
over  the  grave  of  her  husband,  Theodoric,  who  fell,  hunting, 
at  the  Spring  Cardena,  which  still  trickles  out  of  the  rock 
behind  the  convent-wall.  It  was  sacked  by  the  Moors  and 
the  monks  murdered  ;  and  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  after  its 
restoration  the  Cid  determined  to  be  buried  beside  them. 
Originally  his  sepulchre  was  before  the  high  altar.  It  was 
afterwards  moved  to  the  S.  transept,  and  though  it  was 
opened  and  rifled  by  the  French,  it  still  remains  much  as 
it  was  when  first  put  up  by  Alonzo  the  Wise.  Here  again 
read  the  inscriptions,  which,  as  they  are  in  Latin,  I  shall 
translate  into  my  own  rude  verse,  turned  over  in  the  long 
night  journey  between  Burgos  and  this  place : 

This  holy  church  of  Peter,  where  Cardena's  waters  flow. 

Good  Sancha  builded  up  on  high,  but  Zephas  laid  it  low ; 

Alonzo  raised  it  up  again,  and  Garcia  watch'd  its  rise  ; 

The  mighty  Cid  hath  honour'd  it  —  for  in  its  walls  he  lies. 

High  chiefs  have  foster'd  its  advance,  great  kings  have  lent  their  aid  : 

Good  Pontiffs,  with  paternal  eye,  its  glories  have  survey'd  : 

Here  rest  our  kings,  and  here  our  chiefs  :  and  here  our  martyrs  sleep. 

Behold  !  and  see  how  Benedict  doth  all  our  worthies  keep. 

'  After  this  compendious  history,  enter  the  transept  and 
look  at  the  venerable  monument.  There  he  lies,  with 
Ximena  by  his  side.  His  arms  are  carved  beneath  — 
namely,  the  two  swords  crossed  behind  a  cross,  and  the 
chains  of  captive  Moors  on  each  side.  Round  the  rim 
of  the  grave  is  a  rude  epitaph,  written  by  Alonzo  the  Wise 
himself.    Here  it  is  : 


8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


The  Champion,  never  conquered,  for  ever  famed  in  war, 
Lies  closed  within  this  sepulchre,  Rodrigo  of  Bivar. 

Underneath  again  are  these  lines  : 

As  mighty  Rome  in  deeds  of  war  all  other  lands  excels, 
As  Arthur  ever  living  still  in  British  memory  dwells. 
As  Charlemagne  to  France  hath  left  his  own  majestic  name, 
So  sheds  the  never-conquered  Cid  on  rugged  Spain  his  fame. 

'Round  about  the  chapel  hang  the  armorial  bearings  of 
all  his  family  —  father,  mother,  wife,  sons,  daughters,  com- 
panions ;  and  over  the  portal,  from  the  Vulgate,  "  How  are 
the  mighty  fallen,  and  the  weapons  of  war  perished!" 
Farewell,  Cid  Campeador  !  The  shades  of  evening  are  fall- 
ing fast,  and  we  caught  the  last  glimpse  of  him  as  he  was 
seen  in  vast  painted  bas-relief,  careering  on  Babieca,  over 
the  convent-door,  trampling  down  the  Moors  under  his  feet. 

'  And  farewell  Spain  !  I  think,  when  I  wrote  before,  that 
I  looked  forward  with  pleasure  to  the  day  on  which  I  should 
recross  the  frontier  of  civilised  France.  Yet  now  that  the 
last  day  has  come,  I  think  only  of  the  delightful  scenes  I 
have  enjoyed  and  the  happy  escapes  out  of  all  difficulties 
which  have  distinguished  this  little  tour.  And  Spain  itself, 
with  all  its  drawbacks,  becomes  dearer  in  the  retrospect. 
It  is  an  "Archangel  ruined"  —  and  its  original  brightness 
still  shines  out  of  its  ruins,  and  the  very  decay  is  interesting 
and  instructive.  It  was  a  glorious  October  evening,  and  we 
mounted  the  rock  of  St.  Sebastian  and  watched  the  sun  go 
down.  The  hills  of  Biscay,  with  their  many  promontories, 
were  lit  up  in  the  departing  glow  —  and  the  purple  ranges 
of  the  Pyrenees  rose  up  on  the  east  —  and  the  dim  line  of 
France  was  seen  to  the  north  —  and  calmly,  almost  without 
a  ripple,  did  the  still  Atlantic  roll  into  the  double  bay — 
and  the  crescent  moon  was  encased  in  a  golden  fleece  of 
clouds,  that  caught  the  splendour  of  the  last  sunlight. 
Everything  was  softened  down  into  harmony  and  repose ; 
and  so  is  it  with  the  recollections  of  this  strange  land,  which 
we  thus  leave,  to  be  once  more,  I  trust,  in  our  own  next  week.' 

Stanley  returned  to  Oxford  in  October  1858.  Six 
months  had  now  elapsed  since  he  had,  with  many  misgivings 
and  much  reluctance,  transferred  his  home  to  Christ  Church. 
Every  day  reconciled  him  more  completely  to  his  new  life. 


CHAP.  XVI  '  CANTERBURY  SERMONS' 


9 


In  March  1859  he  published  a  volume  of  his  '  Canterbury 
Sermons,'  and  the  publication  of  this  volume  seems  to  mark 
the  date  when  he  finally  bade  farewell  to  his  old  home, 
and  definitely  transferred  his  affections  to  the  new. 

In  a  letter  to  J.  C.  Shairp  he  states  the  objects  which 
he  had  in  publishing  the 

'  volume  of  (chiefly)  "  Canterbury  Sermons  "  on  the  Preaching 
of  the  Gospel.  They  do  not  round  off  the  subject  as 
clearly  as  I  could  have  wished.  But  I  wanted  to  put  out 
a  feeler  to  see  whether  anything  that  can  be  said  on  this 
matter  can  make  any  way  through  the  dense  mass  of  un- 
scriptural,  unevangelical  clamour  that  hedges  us  in.' 

Elsewhere  he  returns  to  the  same  subject,  still  in  refer- 
ence to  the  '  Canterbury  Sermons  '  : 

'Of  course,  my  object  was  to  preserve  the  due  propor- 
tions, though  bringing  out  more  prominently  those  doctrines 
which  have  suffered  undue  eclipse.  Considering,  for 
example,  how  large  an  amount  of  our  Lord's  severity  is 
aimed  against  the  religious  world,  and  how  entirely  this  is 
put  by  them  on  one  side,  I  think  that  the  sermon  on  the 
Truth  of  Christ  contains  as  much  of  that  quality  as  could 
be  expected  in  such  an  outline.  Apparently,  the  public 
will  ignore  those  doctrines  as  long  as  they  can.  But  this 
only  convinces  me  the  more  of  their  truth,  and  comforts 
me  by  the  thought  of  the  vast  latent  future  that  is  reserved 
for  the  religion  of  the  Gospel,  whenever  it  shall  be  really 
acknowledged.' 

The  '  Canterbury  Sermons,'  in  fact,  illustrate  some  of 
the  most  characteristic  habits  of  Stanley's  mind.  Striving 
to  make  religion  a  life  rather  than  a  creed,  his  preaching 
is  practical,  not  doctrinal ;  it  is  directed  rather  for  the 
truth  than  against  error.  He  sets  aside  theology  in  order 
to  reach  the  fountain-head  of  the  Christian  faith.  He  uses 
the  words,  'Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,'  not  as  a  theological 
watchword,  nor  as  a  doctrinal  statement  of  an  ineffable 
relation,  but  as  a  summary  of  a  life,  character,  and  teaching 


lO 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1858-61 


which  satisfied  and  developed  his  idea  of  God.  Through- 
out the  Sermons  his  object  is  one  which  he  steadily  pursued 
in  all  his  writings  and  conversation  —  to  elevate,  expand 
and  widen  the  tone  of  thought  on  the  subjects  which  he 
touches.  Throughout  his  motto  might  have  been,  'The 
letter  killeth  '  ;  throughout  he  instinctively  endeavours  to 
penetrate  to  the  original  idea  in  its  plastic,  embryonic,  fluid 
state,  before  it  had  stiffened  into  dogma ;  throughout  he 
is  sustained  by  the  conviction  of  the  glorious  future  which 
might  yet  await  the  Church  if  once  its  teaching  were  truly 
based  on  'The  Way,  the  Truth,  the  Life.' 

Before  1859,  as  has  been  said,  Stanley  frequently  laments 
his  severance  from  Canterbury.  After  that  date  the  regret 
gradually  disappears.    In  March  i860  he  writes  to  Shairp  : 

'  You  rightly  argue  that  I  have  at  last  found  my  foot- 
ing here.  My  lectures  appear  to  be  better  understood,  and 
I  find  that  I  can  say  what  I  wish  without  being  either 
attacked  or  suspected.  The  evil,  no  doubt,  still  is  the 
dearth  of  able,  serious  students.' 

Yet  his  gratitude  for  the  repose  of  Canterbury  never 
failed.    'I  never  cease,'  he  says  in  1863, 

'  to  be  thankful  for  the  seven  years  in  that  green  island  ; 
but  I  feel  that  it  was  good  to  take  to  sea  again,  and  on 
that  sea  I  suppose  that  it  will  now  be  my  fate  to  be  tossed 
about  as  long  as  I  live,  or,  at  least,  as  long  as  I  have  my 
health.' 

At  Oxford  he  found  himself,  as  time  went  on,  possessed 
of  much  of  that  independence  which  he  had  especially 
valued  at  Canterbury,  while  a  wider  sphere  of  usefulness, 
particularly  among  the  rising  generation,  compensated  him 
for  the  comparative  loss  of  leisure,  and  of  freedom  from 
theological  controversy.  In  the  midst  of  misgivings  when 
he  first  accepted  the  Professorship,  he  had  been  cheered  by 
the  hope  of  awakening  an  interest  in  the  study  of  eccle- 


CHAP.  XVI 


HIS  INFLUENCE  AT  OXFORD 


II 


siastical  history,  and  of  exercising  'useful  social  influences.' 
Both  among  young  and  old  the  hope  was  abundantly 
realised.  It  may,  indeed,  be  questioned  whether  he  would 
not  have  exercised  a  deeper  influence  on  his  time  had  he 
remained  at  Oxford.  There  might  have  been  less  ground 
for  the  sad  complaint  which  he  uttered  not  long  before  his 
death  :  '  This  generation  is  lost ;  it  is  either  plunged  in 
dogmatism  or  agnosticism.  I  look  forward  to  the  generation 
which  is  to  come.'  If  he  had  remained  at  Oxford,  he  might 
have  mediated  between  the  two  extremes  more  effectually 
than  at  Westminster ;  for,  while  he  charmed  older  men,  he 
led  the  young.  '  My  heart  leaps  up,'  he  would  say,  'when  I 
behold  an  undergraduate.'  And  the  delight  which  he  felt 
in  the  society  of  young  men  was  warmly  reciprocated  by 
the  young  men  themselves. 

Few  undergraduates  could  resist  the  enthusiasm  which 
marked  his  formal  lectures  or  his  informal,  catechetical, 
conversational  instruction.  Fewer  still  were  proof  against 
his  personal  charm  in  the  midst  of  his  breakfast-parties,  or 
his  social  gatherings  on  Sunday  evenings  at  Christ  Church. 
'  It  was  his  custom,'  ^  says  one  who  afterwards  became  an 
intimate  friend,  but  who  was  then  an  undergraduate, 

'  at  Christ  Clnirch,  when  alone,  to  open  his  house  on  Sun- 
day evenings  to  any  of  his  undergraduate  acquaintances 
who  cared  to  go,  and  it  was  a  privilege  of  which  several  of  us 
availed  ourselves  whenever  it  was  offered.  To  nothing:  in 
my  University  life  do  I  look  back  with  more  pleasure  than 
to  those  delightful  Sunday  evenings  at  Stanley's  house,  and 
to  the  perfect  freedom  from  restraint  that  we  all  felt  in  his 
company.  Many  thoughtless  sayings  were  often  uttered 
by  us,  which  might  well  have  provoked  a  rebuke  or  a  sar- 
casm from  one  in  his  position.  But  though  I  clearly  recol- 
lect one  or  two  cases  in  which  a  question  was  asked,  or  a 

2  Mr.  Victor  Williamson,  to  whose  untiring  labours  in  arranging  and  cata- 
loguing the  mass  of  papers  relating  to  the  late  Dean  Stanley  the  biographer  is 
on  every  page  indebted. 


12 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1858-61 


remark  made,  that  caused  us  to  burst  into  laughter  at  the 
unlucky  speaker,  not  a  word  or  expression  ever  fell  from 
Stanley  in  his  answer  to  make  the  man  conscious  that  he 
had  said  a  silly  thing.' 

His  lectures  were  always  interesting.  Every  character  or 
incident  with  which  he  dealt  was  made  alive  to  his  hearers. 
In  addressing  large  classes  he  combined  the  written 
lecture  with  simpler,  unwritten  illustration,  or  even  with 
questioning,  in  a  manner  that  might  be  commended  to 
modern  teachers.  The  questions  were  enforced  by  touches, 
sometimes,  in  his  unskilful  hands,  by  pokes  with  a  long  stick 
which  was  intended  to  indicate  the  quarter  whence  an  answer 
was  expected.  Once,  as  a  pupil  remembers,  he  addressed 
a  very  ordinary  question  about  the  parent  of  a  patriarch  to 
one  of  those  who  were  sitting  near  him.  The  stick  touched 
the  head  which  was  leaning  forward  over  a  note-book.  The 
head  rose,  and  disclosed  the  blushing  features  of  a  well- 
known  Oxford  tutor,  who  could  not  answer  the  question. 
After  this  accident  the  use  of  the  stick  was  discontinued. 

Another  anecdote,  related  by  the  Rev.  A.  G.  Butler,  is 
characteristic : 

'  When  preparing  a  lecture  upon  early  Church  history, 
Stanley  wished  for  a  large  chart  giving  a  list,  in  order,  of 
the  early  Fathers  and  the  principal  heretics.  This  he  en- 
trusted me  to  draw  up  on  a  large  sheet  from  a  paper  which 
he  furnished  ;  and  in  giving  me  his  directions  he  begged 
that,  with  a  view  to  distinctness,  the  heretics  might  be 
underlined  with  red  ink.  But  here  arose  the  difficulty. 
Who  was  a  heretic Some  one  or  two  great  offenders 
were  promptly  disposed  of ;  some  others  were  condemned, 
with  a  sigh,  in  deference  to  general  opinion.  But  it  was 
amusing  to  see  his  tenderness  for  Origen,  his  unwillingness 
to  brand  him  even  with  the  faintest  mark  of  disapprobation  ; 
and  it  was  only  after  a  struggle  that  he  bid  me  put  "  a  very 
small  line  of  red"  under  his  name.  "Perhaps,"  he  added 
with  his  playful  smile,  "they  won't  see  it."  ' 

But  Stanley's  influence  was  not  confined  to  the  lecture- 


CHAP.  XVI         HIS  INFLUENCE  AT  OXFORD 


13 


room :  it  was  great  also  in  the  pulpit.  Many  young 
men  in  the  University  felt  the  povi^er  of  his  appeal  to 
work  at  something,  to  fill  whatever  place  they  happened  to 
hold.  The  following  extract  from  a  letter  written  by  the 
Rev.  H.  L.  Thompson,  for  some  years  Censor  of  Christ 
Church,  and  now  Head-Master  of  Radley  College,  to  Dr. 
Liddell,  protests  against  an  attack  made  upon  Stanley  in  a 
letter  communicated  to  the  press,  and  bears  striking  testi- 
mony to  the  character  of  his  influence  as  a  preacher : 

*  Dr.  Pusey's  letter  was  very  painful  to  those  who,  like 
myself,  remember  Dr.  Stanley's  sermons  in  our  under- 
graduate days,  and  feel  sure  that  his  influence  was  largely 
for  good.  I  had  a  letter  the  other  day  from  a  clergyman 
of  my  own  standing,  who  spoke  of  the  Dean's  sermons  as 
almost  the  only  sermons  from  which  he  gained  practical 
good  when  at  Oxford,  and  I  have  heard  the  same  account 
of  them  from  other  men  of  different  ages  and  widely  dif- 
ferent opinions.  He  used  to  direct  men's  thoughts  to  the 
duty  and  manliness  of  earnest  work ;  and  those  who  were 
aroused  by  him  from  a  frivolous  and  purposeless  life,  and 
found  themselves  led,  by  the  very  change,  to  think  about 
the  vital  questions  of  religious  doctrine,  were  by  no  means 
slavish  followers  of  his  opinions.  He  had  given  them  a 
purpose  by  urging  them  to  work ;  and  then  they  were 
led  to  think,  and  to  think  for  themselves.  Dr.  Pusey's  ex- 
perience must  be  very  one-sided.  No  doubt,  however,  he 
has  come  to  know  some  cases  where  independent  thought 
has  led  to  unbelief ;  but  who  does  not  know  of  similar 
cases  where  there  has  been  a  fatal  and  more  hopeless 
reaction  from  the  teaching  of  the  High  Church  school  ' 

Still  stronger,  because  more  personal,  is  the  testimony 
afforded  by  the  following  letter  from  the  late  John  Richard 
Green,  the  historian : 

'  2  Victoria  Gardens,  Ladbroke  Road,  Netting  Hill,  W.: 
December  1863. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  —  I  have  only  now  learnt  from 
Oakley  your  direction,  or  I  should  have  ventured  before  to 
offer  my  congratulations  on  your  marriage.    No  one  can 


14 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1858-61 


wish  you  more  happiness  than  I,  to  whom  you  have  been 
the  cause  of  so  much. 

'  I  have  often  longed  in  the  midst  of  my  work,  historical 
or  clerical,  to  tell  you  how  wholly  that  work,  and  the 
happiness  which  comes  from  it,  are  owing  to  you.  I  am 
glad  I  delayed  till  now,  till  the  close  of  your  Oxford 
teaching,  that  you  may  at  least  know  what  your  teaching 
has  done  for  one  Oxford  man  out  of  the  many  that  you 
taught. 

'  I  came  up  to  Oxford  a  hard  reader  and  a  passionate 
High  Churchman ;  two  years  of  residence  left  me  idle  and 
irreligious.  Partly  from  ill-health,  partly  from  disgust  at 
my  college,  I  had  cut  myself  off  from  society  within  or 
without  it.  I  rebelled  doggedly  against  the  systems  around 
me ;  I  would  not  work  because  work  was  the  Oxford 
virtue  ;  I  tore  myself  from  history,  which  I  loved,  and 
plunged  into  the  trifles  of  archaeology,  because  they  had  no 
place  in  the  University  course.  I  remember  that  in  the 
absolute  need  I  felt  of  some  reading,  and  my  resolve  to  read 
nothing  that  could  possibly  bring  me  in  contact  with  what 
Oxford  valued,  I  spent  a  year  over  the  literature  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  especially  the  vexed  questions  in 
the  life  of  Pope  !  Of  course,  all  this  seems  now  absurd  as 
a  sick  man's  dream,  but  absurd  as  it  was,  it  was  the  life  I 
had  deliberately  chosen  and  was  doggedly  carrying  on 
when  accident  brought  me  to  your  lecture-room. 

'  It  was  the  same  with  religion.  High  Churchism  fell 
with  a  great  crash,  and  left  nothing  behind  —  nothing  but  a 
vague  reverence  for  goodness,  however  narrow  and  bigoted 
in  form,  which  kept  me  as  far  from  the  shallow  conceit  of 
the  current  Oxford  Liberalism  as  I  had  already  drifted  from 
the  Mansel  orthodoxy.  I  saw  only  religious  parties  unjust 
to  one  another,  and  I  stood  apart,  unjust  to  them  all.  I  had 
vvithdrawn  myself  from  Oxford  work,  and  I  found  no  help 
in  Oxford  theology. 

'  I  was  utterly  miserable  when  I  wandered  into  your 
lecture-room ;  and  my  recollection  of  what  followed  is  not 
so  much  of  any  definite  words  as  of  a  great  unburthening. 
Then,  and  afterwards,  I  heard  you  speak  of  work,  not  as  a 
thing  of  classes  and  fellowships,  but  as  something  worthy 
for  its  own  sake,  worthy  because  it  made  us  like  the  Great 
Worker.  That  sermon  on  Work  was  like  a  revelation  to  me. 
"  If  you  cannot,  or  will  not,  work  at  the  work  which  Oxford^ 


CHAP.  XVI 


HIS  INFLUENCE  AT  OXFORD 


15 


gives  you,  at  any  rate  work  at  something."  I  took  up  my 
old  boy-dream,  history,  again.  I  think  I  have  been  a 
steady  worker  ever  since.  And  so  in  reUgion  —  it  was  not 
so  much  a  creed  that  you  taught  me,  as  fairness.  You 
were  liberal ;  you  pointed  forward,  you  believed  in  a  future 
as  other  "  Liberals  "  did,  but  you  were  not,  like  them,  un- 
just to  the  present  or  the  past.  I  found  that  old  vague 
reverence  of  mine  for  personal  goodness,  which  alone  re- 
mained to  me,  widened  in  your  teaching  into  true  catho- 
licity. I  used  to  thilik  as  I  left  your  lecture-room  of  how 
many  different  faiths  and  persons  you  had  spoken,  and  how 
you  had  revealed  and  taught  me  to  love  the  good  that  was 
in  them  all.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  that  great  principle  of 
fairness  has  helped  ever  since ;  how  in  my  reading  it  has 
helped  mc  out  of  partisanship  and  mere  hero-worship.  In 
my  parish  it  used  to  disclose  to  me  the  real  sterling  worth 
of  obstructive  churchwardens  or  meddling  committeemen. 
But  it  has  helped  me  most  of  all  in  my  realisation  of  the 
Church,  that  Church  of  all  men  and  all  things  "  working 
together  for  good,"  drawn  on  through  error  and  ignorance 
by  and  to  Him  who  is  Wisdom  and  Truth. 

'  I  have  said  much  more  than  I  purposed,  and  yet  much 
less  than  I  might  say.  Of  course,  there  were  other  influ- 
ences. Carlyle  helped  me  to  work ;  above  all,  Montaigne 
helped  me  to  fairness.  But  the  personal  impression  of  a 
living  man  must  always  be  greater  and  more  vivid  than 
those  of  books. 

'  I  only  pray  that  in  your  new  sphere  you  may  be  to 
others  what  in  your  old  sphere  you  were  to  me. 

'Believe  me,  dear  Dr.  Stanley, 

'  Faithfully  yours, 

'J.  R.  Green.' 

Nor  did  Stanley  lose  interest  in  his  pupils  as  soon  as 
they  had  passed  from  under  his  immediate  care.  He  fol- 
lowed their  subsequent  course,  always  ready  to  reopen 
communication  with  them,  and  always  ready  to  help  them 
in  the  difficulties  of  after-life.  No  one,  probably,  knows 
how  many  struggling  pupils  owed  to  his  delicate  sympathy 
that  timely  aid  which  changed  the  whole  future  of  their 
careers.    To  accumulate  instances  of  such  pecuniary  assist- 


i6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN'  STANLEY 


1858-61 


ance  would  be  almost  an  insult  to  his  memory.  But  his 
time  and  his  advice  were  also  placed  at  their  disposal.  'If 
I  can  hope,'  he  writes  to  a  former  pupil,  who  had  consulted 
him  on  a  difficulty,  '  to  be  of  any  use  to  those  who  have  at- 
tended my  lectures,  it  is  my  best  reward.'  The  following 
series  of  letters  show  how  ungrudgingly  his  help  was  given. 
The  first  letter  refers  to  the  Athanasian  Creed. 

'Your  difficulty  about  "the  damnatory  clauses"  is,  as 
you  must  be  aware,  not  new.  You  will  find  that  they  were 
regarded  just  as  you  view  them  by  Archbishop  Tillotson, 
Bishop  Burnet,  Bishop  Tomline,  Dr.  Arnold,  and,  I  believe, 
many  others,  whose  names  would  carry  weight.  There  are 
some  softening  explanations  that  can  be  given  of  them : 
e.g.,  "must  thus  think"  is  too  strong  aversion  of  "  ita  sen- 
tiat";  "whosoever  will"  hardly  renders  the  force  of  "  giii- 
ainqiie  vidt" ;  and  it  is  possible  that  the  anathemas  did 
not  extend  to  every  detail.  But  the  only  satisfactory  mode 
of  reconciling  our  minds  to  these  clauses  seems  to  me  this  : 

'  First,  the  main  question  for  a  clergyman  to  ask  himself 
is,  whether  he  is  willing  to  receive  the  Prayer  Book  as  a 
whole.  If  he  is,  then  any  objections  to  particular  portions 
ought  not  to  weigh  with  him.  No  Liturgy  can  ever  be 
perfect,  and  the  only  chance  of  having  one  at  all  is  the 
readiness  of  those  concerned  to  accept  the  exceptional 
blemishes  for  the  sake  of  the  excellent  effect  of  the  whole 
together.  The  harshness  of  the  damnatory  clauses  is  over- 
borne a  hundredfold  by  the  spirit  of  all  the  Collects  and  all 
the  occasional  services,  nay,  even  by  the  spirit  of  the  con- 
cluding words  of  the  Creed  itself  —  "And  they  that  have 
done  good,"  &c.  The  same  kind  of  surrender  is  required 
no  less  in  the  case  of  the  Authorised  Version.  There  are 
hundreds  of  false  readings.  But  we  need  not  scruple  to 
read  them,  because  the  excellence  of  the  translation  as  a 
whole,  and  the  difficulty  of  altering  it,  ought  to  make  us 
content  with  its  general  effect,  without  troubling  ourselves 
minutely  as  to  its  particular  faults. 

'  But,  secondly,  you  may  rest  perfectly  assured  that  your 
view  of  the  clauses  is  shared  by  the  vast  majority  of  English 
clergymen.  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  one  in  1,000  who 
would  apply  the  words  in  their  strict  and  literal  sense,  even 
to  Unitarians  —  not  one  in  10,000  who  would  apply  them  to 


CHAP.  XVI 


ADVICE  TO  PUPILS 


the  Greek  Christians,  who  differ  from  its  doctrine  on  the 
Holy  Spirit. 

'There  is,  probably,  no  bishop  who  would  object  to 
receiving  you  for  Ordination  because  of  your  scruples  on 
this  point. 

'  If  it  were  not  for  the  great  difficulty  of  revising  one  part 
of  the  Prayer  Book  without  the  rest,  I  have  little  doubt 
that  the  Athanasian  Creed  would  be  removed.  But  this 
difficulty  is  so  keenly  felt  at  present,  that  I  cannot  see  any 
reason  why  you  may  not,  with  perfect  good  faith,  be  guided 
by  the  considerations  which  I  have  named  to  you. 

'  If  there  should  be  anything  in  what  I  have  said  which 
would  make  you  wish  to  write  to  me  again,  pray  do  not 
scruple.  I  shall  be  delighted  to  help  you  in  any  way  that 
I  can.' 

The  second  letter  replies  to  questions  on  the  Interpre- 
tation of  the  Bible,  and  on  the  expediency  of  writing 
sermons  before  ^dination. 

'I.  I  do  not  think  that  any  book  on  the  Interpretation 
of  Scripture  is  necessary. 

'  You  have  only  to  approach  the  Bible  with  the  reverence 
due  to  the  authority  which  all  Christians  acknowledge,  and 
with  the  wish  to  make  out  the  meaning  as  you  would  that 
of  any  other  book,  and  then  (it  seems  to  me)  the  interpre- 
tation will  come  of  itself.  If,  however,  you  should  wish  for 
any  special  directions  as  to  what  are  thought  the  difficulties 
of  Scripture,  I  think  that  you  would  derive  some  help  from 
an  essay  on  the  Interpretation  of  Scripture  at  the  end  of 
the  second  volume,  and  a  Preface  on  the  Study  of  Theology 
at  the  beginning  of  the  third  volume,  of  Arnold's  Sermons. 
Also,  two  sermons  which  were  published  separately  by  him 
on  the  Interpretation  of  Prophecy ;  and  (if  it  were  not 
adding  too  much)  many  of  the  sermons  of  the  sixth  volume. 
These  sermons  are  published  by  Fellowes,  in  London,  and 
you  can  get  each  volume  apart  from  the  others ;  and  even 
when  they  do  not  bear  on  the  direct  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture, you  would  find  them  very  instructive  as  sermons.  If 
you  should  wish  for  commentaries  on  any  special  parts,  or 
for  any  helps  in  any  particular  department,  ask  again,  and 
I  will  do  my  best  to  answer  you. 

'2.  I  entirely  agree  with  the  doubt  which  you  express 
VOL.  II  C 


i8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1858-61 


yourself  as  to  the  expediency  of  writing  sermons  before  you 
are  ordained.  I  think  that  it  would  be  entirely  lost  time. 
But  you  might  gain  much  benefit,  both  to  your  style  and 
to  your  future  power  of  instruction,  by  making  short 
analyses  or  expositions  of  passages  of  the  Bible  —  say,  a 
parable,  or  a  Gospel  or  Epistle  of  the  Sunday,  such  as  you 
might  hereafter  develop  into  a  sermon.  Also,  you  might 
keep  a  book  for  extracts,  for  passages  from  other  books, 
which  strike  you  as  bearing  on  particular  texts,  or  as  en- 
forcing particular  duties.  If  it  were  any  help  to  you  now 
and  then  to  send  me  such  an  analysis,  I  would  return  it  to 
you,  with  any  remarks  that  occurred  to  me.  But  this  is 
just  as  you  would  wish.' 

The  third  letter  is  a  reply  to  a  pupil's  request  to  recom- 
mend a  book  on  the  Sacrament. 

'  The  best  book  which  I  know  on  the  Sacrament  is  one 
which  was  put  into  my  hands  by  one  of  the  best  of  men  in 
Scotland  this  summer ;  but  it  combines  two  names  which 
have  of  late  been  so  curiously  brought  into  public  notice 
that  I  hardly  like  to  mention  it.  It  is  Colcnsd s  collec- 
tion of  extracts  from  Maurice  on  this  subject.  I  forget 
the  exact  title,  but  Macmillan  doubtless  would  have  it. 
It  is  a  very  small  book,  published  some  ten  years  ago.' 

The  fourth  and  last  letter  answers  several  questions,  the 
tenor  of  which  appears  from  the  nature  of  the  reply : 

'  Your  letter  needs  no  excuses.  To  be  allowed  to  help 
any  single  human  soul  through  the  difficulties  of  this  mortal 
life,  to  help  one  who  is  so  sincerely  striving  to  serve  God 
as  I  believe  you  to  be,  is  a  mercy  which,  I  trust,  I  feel  as  I 
ought.  It  is,  at  any  rate,  an  inexpressible  ground  of  com- 
fort and  encouragement. 

'In  answer  to  your  first  question,  I  cannot  myself  even 
conceive  how  our  Lord  should  have  addressed  His  hearers 
otherwise  than  in  conformity  with  the  received  notions  of 
the  time  on  matters  of  Biblical  Science.  We  all  acknow- 
ledge this  on  matters  of  phy.sical  science,  and  the  dis- 
coveries and  arguments,  by  which  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  are  now  assigned  to  authors  different  from  those 
whose  names  they  bear,  as  entirely  belong  to  our  age  as  do 


CHAP.  XVI 


ADVICE  TO  PUPILS 


19 


the  arguments  and  discoveries  of  astronomy  or  geology. 
He  Himself  has  said,  that  of  the  times  of  the  end  of  the 
world  He  was  ignorant.  The  Evangelists  tell  us  that  He 
increased  in  ivisdom  —  which  Keble  has  so  well  para- 
phrased : 

Was  not  our  Lord  a  little  child, 

Taught  by  degrees  to  pray, 
By  father  dear  and  mother  mild 

Instructed  day  by  day. 

'  The  monstrous  claim  that  we  make,  on  His  behalf,  that 
He  should  have  been  a  cyclopedia  of  all  the  knowledge  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  appears  to  me  exactly  analogous  to 
that  of  the  Jews  of  the  first  century,  that  He  should  have 
been  a  conquering  king,  like  Julius  Caesar  or  Solomon. 
That  there  should  have  been  this  reticence,  this  ignorance, 
is  not  only  a  necessary  consequence  of  His  humanity  (like 
His  weakness.  His  sufferings,  His  agony  in  the  Garden, 
which  are  all  of  them  at  least  as  incompatible  with  the 
omnipotence  of  Deity  as  His  ignorance,  if  so  it  be,  is  with 
the  omniscience  of  Deity),  but  is  to  me  a  blessed  proof  of  the 
universal  adaptation  of  the  Bible  to  our  wants.  How  far, 
far  better  for  its  perpetual  progress,  and  for  the  perpetual 
progress  of  truth,  than  if  it  had  been  wedded  to  any  one 
critical  theory  of  any  particular  age,  which  would  have  been 
unintelligible  to  any  other  than  its  own ! 

'  The  only  exception  which  I  venture  to  make  to  this 
general  admission  of  our  Lord's  humanity  is,  that  it  does 
appear  to  me  as  if  in  the  Gospels,  even  beyond  what 
appears  in  the  Epistles,  the  allusions  to  the  Old  Testament 
are  free  from  detail,  free  from  special  interpretation,  point 
to  the  grander  principles  which  are  involved  in  the  passages 
that  He  touches,  carry  us  to  a  sphere  from  which  we  may  look 
down  with  safety  on  all  the  controversies  which  have  since 
arisen.  I  will  take  as  a  single  instance  the  comment  on 
"I  am  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob."  This  kind 
of  elevation,  however,  seems  to  me  quite  different  from  the 
mechanical  anticipation  of  science,  which  appears  to  me  so 
preposterous. 

'The  same  general  principle  will,  I  think,  apply  to  the 
case  of  the  Demoniacs.  It  is  difificult  to  know  exactly  what 
is  meant.  For  my  part,  I  should  be  sorry  to  part  entirely 
with  the  notion  of  possession.  But  if  there  should  be  any 
truth  in  the  statement  that  the  symptoms  are  those  of 


20 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1858-61 


madness,  then  what  I  have  said  before  would  meet  the  case 
here.  If  at  that  time  the  forms  of  what  we  call  madness 
were  called  demoniacal  possession,  then,  again,  He  could 
not,  I  conceive,  have  spoken  otherwise  than  He  did. 

'  Into  the  question  of  the  modern  spiritualists  I  have  not 
entered.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  people  somewhat  com- 
plicate the  matter  by  regarding  it  from  a  religious  side.  It 
may  be  that  particular  persons  (perhaps  all  people  in  some 
degree)  are  endowed  with  a  sort  of  magnetic  power,  which 
causes,  or  enables  them  to  cause,  these  impressions,  but 
which  is  no  more  preternatural  or  religious  than  the  power 
of  music,  or  scent,  or  poetry,  or  any  other  natural,  though 
extraordinary,  gift.  The  only  point  of  view  from  which  it 
is  theologically  interesting  is,  that  it  may  have  been  the 
outward,  human,  or  natural  instrument  throitgJi  which,  in 
former  times,  revelations  from  a  higher  moral  world  were 
made.' 

Among  older  men  Stanley's  influence  was  necessarily 
different.  He  lacked  the  resolute,  determined  concentra- 
tion on  the  mastery  of  a  single  branch  of  knowledge,  the 
sustained  attention  to  any  one  line  of  thought,  which  are 
essential  to  intellectual  leaders.  He  never  could  have 
settled  down  alone  in  a  remote  solitude  to  think  out  a 
subject.  But  everything  combined  to  make  him  a  moral 
and  social  power  of  the  best  and  highest  kind. 

He  had  that  genius  for  friendship  which  consists  in  the 
craving  for  sympathy  and  the  readiness  to  give  it.  He 
felt  the  need  for  himself,  and  he  satisfied  it  in  others,  to 
have  his  tastes,  wishes,  views  consulted.  He  delighted  to 
pour  out  his  stores  for  the  pleasure  and  profit  of  his  friends, 
but  it  was  an  equal  delight  to  him  to  be  the  recipient  also 
of  their  treasures.  He  felt  an  instinctive  shrinking  from 
those  altercations  which  so  often  destroy  the  blessings  of 
friendship.  On  one  occasion  he  wrote  to  his  sister,  mention- 
ing with  extreme  pleasure  that,  at  three  successive  houses 
in  which  he  had  been  staying,  he  had  never  heard  a  note 
of  discord.    When  any  harshness  or  acerbity  of  temper  was 


CHAP.  XVI        H/S  GENIUS  FOR  FRIENDSHIP 


21 


betrayed  in  his  presence,  he  would  simply  relapse  into 
silence,  and  look  distressed,  until  he  could  find  the  oppor- 
tunity of  introducing  some  change  of  topic. 

The  habit,  which  he  often  inculcates  in  his  sermons,  of 
making  the  best  of  people  —  of  ignoring  differences,  and 
finding  and  developing  points  of  sympathy  —  was  his  own 
continual  practice.  It  was  not  that  he  was  unable  to  see 
faults  in  his  friends.  With  all  his  admiration  for  Arnold, 
he  yet  lamented  his  failings.  But,  as  he  had  a  genius  for 
friendship,  so  also  he  had  a  passion  for  justice.  He  dwelt 
upon  the  good  that  he  found  in  men  till  to  him,  and  often 
to  them,  it  absorbed,  effaced,  and  overcame  the  evil.  He 
hardly  ever  stated,  and  very  rarely  even  admitted,  anything 
to  the  prejudice  of  another  man.  If  he  could  not  speak 
well  of  them,  he  would  close  his  lips  in  a  determined  way. 
He  had  none  of  that  selfish  angularity  which  is  only  con- 
scious of  its  own  bruises.  He  never,  it  may  be  almost  said 
with  literal  truth,  had  a  feud  or  a  coolness  with  any  of  his 
associates  which  was  not  caused  by  his  taking  up  the 
cudgels  on  behalf  of  someone,  often  a  stranger  to  himself, 
who  was  attacked.  Even  then  the  alienation  was  never 
on  his  side.  If  a  friend  or  acquaintance  insisted  on  break- 
ing with  him,  he  would  watch  his  opportunity  to  win  him 
back,  sometimes  by  frank,  but  gentle,  remonstrances,  some- 
times by  acts  of  thoughtful  kindness,  sometimes  by  inviting 
him  to  his  table  to  meet  distinguished  guests.  He  was 
almost  equally  anxious  to  remove  misunderstandings  be- 
tween his  friends,  pleading  with  each  for  the  other,  yet 
without  ceasing  to  be  friendly  to  both  ;  eager  to  smooth 
away  all  occasions  for  outbreaks,  and,  if  they  occurred,  to 
gather  up  and  piece  together  the  broken  fragments  of 
friendship. 

He  was  remarkable  for  the  extension  and  expansive- 
ness  of  his  genius  for  friendship.    His  countless  friends 


22  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1858-61 


were  like  beads,  scattered  far  and  wide  when  the  string 
connecting  them  was  broken.  Nothing  could  ever  bring 
them  together  again.  Nor  was  the  genius  less  remarkable 
for  its  intensity.  In  his  intimate  friendships,  which  were, 
of  course,  few,  there  was  no  reserve.  To  his  mother  and 
sisters  his  heart  and  mind  stood  open  from  the  earliest 
years.  From  Hugh  Pearson  or  Professor  Jowett  he  had 
no  secrets.  And  with  his  wife  the  union  of  thought  and 
feeling  was  so  complete  that  it  is  only  wonderful  how  much 
affection,  sympathy,  and  interest  it  left  to  spare  for  others. 

In  June  1858  Stanley's  close  and  intimate  friend.  Bishop 
Cotton,  was  preparing  to  leave  England  for  Calcutta,  to 
the  see  of  which  he  had  been  appointed.  The  Bishop 
writes  from  Christ  Church  to  his  successor-elect  at  Marl- 
borough College,  the  present  Dean  of  Westminster : 

'I  came  here  from  a  desire  to  see  A.  P.  S.  in  his  Oxford 
home  before  going  to  my  Indian.  We  have  had  two  pleasant 
banquets.  What  an  element  of  peace  and  goodwill  he  is  ! 
The  first  dinner  was  heterogeneous  enough ;  yet  all  was 
most  harmonious  and  cheerful.  Stanley's  stories  about 
Becket's  brains  and  Louis  XVIth.'s  blood  assume  a  posi- 
tively sacred  value  when  they  bind  together  in  friendly 
union  the  latitudinarian  and  the  stiff-necked  .' 

Consistent  and  undeviating  in  the  pursuit  of  the  one 
great  object  of  his  life,  he  was  untiring  in  his  efforts  to 
propagate,  both  by  teaching  and  example,  the  spirit  of 
tolerance.  Whatever  storms  might  rage  in  academical 
society,  his  own  home  at  Christ  Church  was  a  place  on  the 
threshold  of  which  all  controversial  bitterness  was  neces- 
sarily abandoned.  Thus  it  was  that  the  social  influence 
which  he  exercised  was,  in  its  special  way,  unique.  In  him 
were  happily  blended  cheerfulness,  perfect  simplicity,  a  high 
and  serious  view  of  life,  and  a  many-sided  capacity  for  its 
enjoyment.  Whether  he  was  speaking,  writing,  or  talking, 
he  commanded  a  perennial  flow  of  what  was  very  nearly 


CHAP.  XVI 


HIS  BREADTH  OF  SYMPATHY 


23 


his  best  self.  His  mind  was  not,  perhaps,  fundamentally 
original.  He  culled  from  all  sources,  but  especially  from 
the  lips  of  men  of  superior  knowledge,  the  information 
which  he  distilled  into  the  honey  of  his  books  and  conversa- 
tion. Possessing  a  rapid  perception  of  analogies  or  differ- 
ences, and  gifted  with  a  highly  pictorial  power  of  descrip- 
tion, the  collocation  of  his  ideas  was  always  apposite,  fresh, 
suggestive,  and  their  presentment  always  vivid  and  pictur- 
esque. Few  persons  talked  with  him  without  eliciting,  if 
not  an  original  thought,  at  least  a  new  point  of  view.  At 
any  moment,  in  connection  with  a  vast  variety  of  subjects, 
there  was  a  pent-up  store  of  interest  and  enthusiasm  which 
was  ready  to  burst  into  expression. 

Partly  by  instinct  and  taste,  partly  on  principle,  he 
always  endeavoured  to  keep  himself  in  touch  with  the 
doings  and  thoughts  of  the  day.  Like  Bishop  Fraser,  he 
was  convinced  that  '  the  man  who  is  out  of  gear  with  his 
times  cannot  influence  others.'  It  was  this  union  of  breadth 
of  sympathy  with  alertness  of  mind  which  made  his  conver- 
sation so  quickening,  refreshing,  and  stimulating.  But  his 
sympathies  were  not  only  broad  :  they  were  also  high.  On 
whatever  subject  he  talked,  he  impressed  his  hearers  with 
the  sense  that  close  behind  the  surface  there  existed  a  loftier 
tone  of  thought,  which  was  always  ready  to  respond  to  the 
slightest  touch  of  congenial  feeling.  He  was  at  once  too 
full  of  tact  and  too  delicately  conscious  of  the  moods  of 
other  men  to  intrude  this  side  of  his  nature  upon  mixed 
society.  But  what  was  said  with  truth  of  the  late  Bishop  of 
Manchester  was,  in  a  less  direct  and  practical  way,  true  of 
Stanley  :  '  He  was  daily  bringing  down  light  from  Heaven 
into  the  life  of  other  people.'  No  one  could  long  come  in 
contact  with  Stanley  without  feeling  that  he  was  walking 
in  the  light,  and  without  being  affected  by  its  radiation.  It 
was  this  background  that  gave  dignity  to  his  simplicity  of 


24 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


i860 


character,  that  preserved  the  spiritual  elements  of  his  nature 
from  materialisation,  that  gilded  his  social  intercourse  with 
a  tenderness,  an  unobtrusiveness,  a  sincerity,  an  evenness 
of  temper,  and  a  consideration  for  others,  that  permeated, 
purified,  and  strengthened  the  society  in  which  he  moved. 

The  crisis  at  which  Stanley  returned  to  Oxford  gave  to 
his  social  influence  a  peculiar  value.  The  air  was  heavily 
charged  with  controversy.  One  question  that  raged 
throughout  the  greater  part  of  his  Oxford  residence  was 
the  proposal  to  provide  a  higher  salary  than  40/.  for  the 
Professor  of  Greek,  a  post  which  was  held  by  his  friend. 
Professor  Jowett.  Time  after  time  the  vote  was  defeated 
by  theological  opponents.  Stanley  threw  himself  into  the 
struggle  with  characteristic  eagerness,^  persevered  in  it  with 
his  usual  pertinacity,  and  eventually  succeeded  in  carrying 
his  point.  His  letters  are  filled  with  allusions  to  a  contest 
which  now  need  scarcely  be  revived,  but  which  sowed  broad- 
cast a  bitter  sense  of  rankling  injustice  among  the  future 
leaders -of  academical  life. 

Another  controversy,  to  which  a  similar  theological 
complexion  was  imparted,  was  the  contest  for  the  Boden 
Professorship  of  Sanskrit,  in  i860.  All  Stanley's  efforts 
were  employed  on  behalf  of  Professor  Max  M tiller,  but 
without  success.  His  own  disappointment  was  keen. 
'  You  will  have,'  he  writes  to  the  defeated  candidate, 

'many  consolations.  I  need  not  dwell  upon  them.  But 
you  must  also  give  us  the  best  consolation  that  we  can  have, 

3  In  1861  he  published,  in  an  anonymous  pamphlet,  a  series  of  extracts 
from  the  works  of  Professor  Jowett,  as  material  on  which  to  decide  whether 
the  spirit  of  his  writings  was  '  a  spirit  at  variance,  or  in  unity,  with  the  best 
teaching  of  the  Prayer  Book  and  the  highest  interests  of  the  Church  of  England  '  : 
Statements  of  Christian  Doctrine  and  Practice,  extracted  from  the  published 
•writings  of  the  Rev.  Benjamin  Jowett.    Oxford,  1 86 1. 

In  the  same  year  he  also  published  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of 
Congregation,  November  20,  1 86 1,  on  the  Endowment  of  the  Regius  Professor 
of  Creek.    With  Notes.    By  A.  P.  Stanley,  D.D.    Oxford,  1 861. 


CHAP.  XVI 


ST.  GEORGE' S-IN-THE-EAST 


25 


and  that  is,  the  assurance  that  we  have  not  been  mistaken 
in  the  high  expectations  we  had  formed  of  you.  You  have 
it  still  in  your  power,  thank  God  !  to  turn  your  energies 
from  this  wretched  turmoil  to  the  pursuits  which  have 
made  your  name  what  it  is.  You  can  still  show  that, 
although  not  Boden  Professor,  you  are,  and  will  remain, 
the  oracle  of  all  who  wish  to  know  the  secrets  of  Indian 
literature  and  religion.  You  can  still,  by  your  writings, 
show  what  the  Christian  religion  may  be  to  India  and  the 
world,  as  you  could  not  do  before,  lest  you  should  be  sus- 
pected of  unworthy  motives.  You  can  still  show  us  how 
a  Christian  scholar  and  philosopher  can  put  to  shame,  by 
Christian  magnanimity,  "the  ignorance  of  foolish  men." 
You  can,  in  this  crisis  of  your  life,  rise  to  the  greatness  of 
the  occasion,  and  make  your  friends  more  proud  of  you 
than  if  they  had  brought  you  into  the  Professorship  by  a 
majority  of  hundreds. 

'  "  Leave  off  wrath  and  let  go  displeasure,  fret  not  thy- 
self, else  shalt  thou  be  moved  to  do  evil."  ' 

Outside  Oxford  other  theological  contests  were  raging, 
and  in  two  of  the  fiercest  Stanley  took  an  important  part. 
One  of  them  was  the  case  of  St.  George's-in-the-East ;  the 
other  was  that  caused  by  the  publication  of  '  Essays  and 
Reviews.' 

The  story  of  the  riots  at  St.  George's-in-the-East  has 
been  told  by  Mr.  Bryan  King  in  his  pamphlet,  '  Sacrilege 
and  its  Encouragement,'  by  Mr.  Lowder  in  his  'Twenty- 
one  Years  in  St.  George's  Mission,'  and  lastly,  with  full 
details,  in  the  recent  biography  of  Archbishop  Tait.*  It  is 
here  only  necessary  to  refer  to  such  points  in  a  disgraceful 
episode  in  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  Metropolis  as 
will  best  explain  the  part  which  was  played  by  Stanley. 

The  parish  of  St.  George's-in-the-East  had  been  since 
1842  under  the  care  of  the  Rev.  Bryan  King.  It  is  a  river- 
side district,  which  then  contained  a  population  of  38,000 
souls,  consisting  partly  of  a  large,  continually-shifting  class 

*  Life  of  Archbishop  Tail,  vol.  i.  pp.  229-249. 


26 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


of  dock  labourers  and  sailors,  partly  of  the  resident  trades- 
men who  supplied  their  wants.  In  this  crowded  district  a 
separate  mission  had  been  established,  to  which  Mr.  Lowder 
was  appointed  in  1856,  and  which  now  forms  the  parish 
of  St.  Peter's,  London  Docks.  The  noble  work  done  by 
Mr.  Lowder  and  his  colleagues  was  watched  with  keen 
interest  by  Stanley,  who  twice  preached  in  the  Mission 
Chapel.  But  the  Rev.  Bryan  King,  and  the  scene  of  the 
riots  at  St.  George's-in-the-East,  were  otherwise  unknown 
to  him  before  the  autumn  of  1859. 

The  Rev.  Bryan  King,  a  man  of  high  courage  and  intense 
earnestness,  endeavoured  to  alter  the  old,  slovenly  services 
in  the  parish  church.  The  changes  which  he  made  were 
in  themselves  slight,  but  they  provoked  the  dissatisfaction 
and  suspicions  of  his  congregation.  The  Nonconforming 
element  was  strong  in  the  parish,  and  the  latent  Puritanism 
of  East-end  London  was  roused.  When,  in  1856,  the 
Rector  announced  his  intention  of  adopting  Eucharistic 
vestments,  the  discontent  grew  stronger.  The  bulk  of  the 
congregation  gradually  withdrew  from  the  church,  leaving 
only  a  few  parishioners  who  sympathised  with  the  Rector 
in  his  ritual  innovations.  An  unfortunate  division  of  au- 
thority fomented  the  growing  dissatisfaction.  By  an  Act 
of  George  II.  the  vestry  possessed  the  right  of  nominating 
a  lecturer,  to  whom  the  Rector  was  obliged,  on  Sunday 
afternoons,  to  allow  the  use  of  the  pulpit  in  the  parish 
church.  In  May  1859  the  vestry  nominated  to  the  vacant 
lectureship  the  Rev.  Hugh  Allen,  who  was  distinguished 
for  the  vehemence  of  his  '  No  Popery  '  tenets.  An  after- 
noon service,  at  which  the  Rector  and  his  choir  sang  the 
Litany,  preceded  the  lecture ;  the  second  congregation 
arrived  before  the  Litany  was  concluded,  and  thus  the  fol- 
lowers of  the  Rev.  Bryan  King  and  of  the  lecturer  were 
brought  into  collision  within  the  walls  of  the  church. 


CHAP.  XVI 


ST.  GEORGE'S-IN-IHE-EAST 


27 


At  first  the  disturbances  were  confined  to  the  afternoon 
service.  The  congregation  of  Mr.  Allen  protested  against  the 
singing  of  the  Litany  by  saying  the  responses  very  loudly 
and  very  unmusically.  The  effect  of  the  discord  suggested 
to  an  eyewitness  the  comparison  of  '  a  handful  of  singing- 
mice  in  a  cage,  surrounded  by  an  army  of  starved  cats.' 
Sunday  after  Sunday  the  protestants  arrived  early,  in  order 
to  disturb  the  Rector's  service.  Finding  they  could  enter 
their  protests  with  impunity,  they  proceeded  to  disturb  all 
public  worship  in  the  church.  A  society  was  formed, 
called  the  Anti-Puseyite  League.  Animosities  were  fanned 
by  correspondents  in  religious  newspapers  ;  the  noisy  irre- 
verence of  a  disorderly  mob  profaned  the  services,  both 
in  the  morning  and  the  evening.  A  regular  plan  was 
organised  to  cough,  hiss,  stamp,  scrape  the  feet,  slam  the 
doors  of  the  pews,  let  loose  dogs  in  the  building,  hustle  and 
insult  the  Rector  and  the  choir.  These  demonstrations 
were  not  confined  to  the  sermon  or  the  choral  service,  but 
the  Lessons  were  interrupted  by  songs  roared  out  from  the 
galleries,  and  such  expressions  in  the  prayers  as  '  the  Cross 
of  Christ,'  'the  Blood  of  Christ,'  'the  Body  and  Blood  of 
Christ,'  became  the  signals  for  disorder  and  buffoonery. 
Actual  violence  could  be  prevented  by  the  police  ;  but  the 
law  appeared  powerless  to  check  noises  and  interruptions, 
which  did  not  come  within  the  legal  definition  of  'outrage.' 

In  May  i860  Stanley  intervened  as  a  peacemaker.  He 
opened  negotiations  with  the  Rev.  Bryan  King,  and  even- 
tually persuaded  him  to  retire  temporarily  from  the  parish 
on  a  year's  leave  of  absence,  leaving  his  place  to  be  filled 
by  some  clergyman  of  Stanley's  selection.  His  choice  had 
fallen  upon  the  Rev.  Septimus  Hansard,  an  old  Rugbeian 
and  a  former  pupil  of  his  own,  who  had  already  proved  his 
exceptional  powers  of  dealing  with  the  population  of  a  low 
Irish  neighbourhood  near  Cato  Street,  and  who  was  well 


28 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  iiTANLEY 


i860 


known  to  Mr.  'Tom '  Hughes  and  Dr.  Tait.  On  June  3rd, 
i860,  after  visiting  Charles  Lowder  at  the  Mission  House, 
and  finding  that  the  choice  of  the  curate-in-charge  was 
personally  acceptable  to  him,  Stanley  wrote  the  following 
letter  to  Mr.  Hansard  : 

'  Listen  with  all  your  mind  to  this  proposal. 

'  You  will  probably  get  a  letter  from  T.  Hughes,  to  the 
effect  that  he  and  I  have  concerted  (with  A.  C.  London)  a 
scheme,  in  which  your  co-operation  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance. 

'  If  you  consent,  it  is  this :  that  Bryan  King  should  be 
invited  to  absent  himself  for  change  of  air  from  St.  George's 
for  a  year,  and  that  a  curate  should  be  put  in  his  place  by 
the  Bishop.  This  curate  is  to  be  yourself.  You  are  the 
only  man  who  would  work  the  place  well,  and  at  the  same 
time  co-operate  with  the  Mission  Clergy,  who  will  be  the 
only  working-staff  left.  The  prospect  of  your  appointment 
is  the  only  thing  which,  probably,  would  reconcile  Bryan 
King  to  leaving  his  parish  for  a  time.  You  would  receive 
the  whole  support  of  T.  Hughes  and  all  his  companions,  of 
A.  P.  S.,  and  of  all  those  whose  aid  you  would  most  value. 
You  would  restore  the  parish  to  peace.  You  would  win  a 
crown  of  glory  for  yourself  and  many  souls  to  God.  By 
the  end  of  the  year  you  would  have  proved  what  you  could 
do,  and  be  rewarded  accordingly. 

'  Bryan  King  could,  of  course,  retire  on  his  full  salary. 
But  money  matters  will  be  arranged  for  you  in  any  way 
that  you  propose.' 

Mr.  Hansard  accepted  the  task,  and  in  July  i860  a 
paragraph  appeared  in  the  '  Times  '  announcing  his  appoint- 
ment as  curate-in-charge  of  St.  George's-in-the-East.  It 
was  part  of  the  plan  that  the  force  of  170  policemen, 
hitherto  employed  at  the  church,  should  be  at  once  with- 
drawn. But  the  following  extract  from  a  letter  of  July  24th, 
i860,  shows  Stanley's  forethought : 

'  When  you  dismiss  the  policemen  from  St.  George's 
Church,  you  must  take  care  to  retain  a  body  outside,  to 
guard  against  any  attack  on  the  Mission  Church.  Every 


CHAP.  XVI 


ST.  GEORGE'S-IN-THE-EAST 


29 


security  must  be  taken  for  this,  lest  you  should  appear  to 
throw  off  the  hornets  from  yourself  on  them.' 

'Trust  in  the  Lord,'  as  Cromwell  said,  'and  keep 
your  temper  dry,'  was  Stanley's  final  advice.  He  was 
present  in  church  on  the  first  Sunday  after  the  change 
was  made.  At  the  evening  service  Mr.  Hansard  preached 
in  his  academical  gown,  and  when  he  appeared  in  the 
pulpit,  Stanley  heard  an  old  woman  exclaim,  '  Thank  God 
it's  black  ! '  '  Dear  old  soul,'  he  used  to  add,  when  telling 
the  story  in  later  years,  '  she  would  say,  if  she  were  alive 
now,  "Thank  God  it's  white  !  "  '  Stanley  also  visited  Mr. 
Bryan  King  at  Bruges,  and  succeeded  in  inducing  him  to 
abstain  from  any  communications  with  his  parishioners, 
which  might  hamper  the  action  of  Mr.  Hansard. 

Gradually  the  riots  ceased,  the  opposition  was  overcome, 
the  mob  quelled,  and  the  services  restored  to  their  former 
tranquillity.  For  six  Sundays  peace  had  been  maintained. 
The  restoration  of  order  afforded  the  opportunity  for  trifling 
concessions  in  matters  of  indifference.  In  November  i860 
Mr.  Hansard  headed  a  deputation  of  the  parishioners  to 
the  Bishop  of  London,  who  proposed  that  a  cathedral  ser- 
vice should  be  taken  as  the  model  of  parochial  worship. 
Mr.  Bryan  King,  to  whom  this  proposal  was  submitted  by 
his  curate-in-charge,  refused  to  accept  the  suggested  com- 
promise, and  Mr.  Hansard,  as  his  representative,  felt  him- 
self unable,  without  disloyalty  to  his  rector,  to  alter  the 
ritual  of  St.  George's-in-the-East.  The  Bishop,  on  the 
other  hand,  insisted  that  the  services  should  be  so  arranged 
as  to  correspond  with  the  customary  rittial  of  London 
churches.  Between  the  conflicting  authorities  of  his  Dio- 
cesan and  his  Rector  the  position  of  Mr.  Hansard  was 
rendered  intolerable.  He  therefore  resigned.  The  ulti- 
mate settlement  of  the  question  was  effected  by  the  Bishop 
providing,  at  his  own  cost,  for  the  care  of  the  parish,  and  by 


30 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


i860 


the  appointment  of  Mr.  Bryan  King,  in  1 861,  to  the  rectory 
of  Avebury,  in  the  Diocese  of  Salisbury. 

If  the  history  of  the  riots  at  St.  George's-in-the-East  is 
a  well-worn  subject,  that  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews  '  is  still 
more  threadbare.  But  Stanley's  position  in  the  strife  was 
so  characteristic,  and  the  effect  upon  his  career  so  impor- 
tant, that  the  story  must  once  more  be  told  at  length. 

In  February  i860  a  volume  of  seven  theological  essays 
by  different  authors  was  published  under  the  title  of  '  Essays 
and  Reviews.'  The  volume  was  prefaced  by  a  short 
'  Advertisement '  : 

'  It  will  readily  be  understood  that  the  Authors  of  the 
ensuing  Essays  are  responsible  for  their  respective  articles 
only.  They  were  written  in  entire  independence  of  each 
other,  and  without  concert  or  comparison. 

'  The  volume,  it  is  hoped,  will  be  received  as  an  attempt 
to  illustrate  the  advantage  derivable  to  the  cause  of  reli- 
gious and  moral  truth  from  a  free  handling,  in  a  becoming 
spirit,  of  subjects  peculiarly  liable  to  suffer  by  the  repeti- 
tion of  conventional  language,  and  from  traditional  modes 
of  treatment.' 

The  first  essay  was  by  Dr.  Temple,  Head  Master  of 
Rugby,  the  last,  by  Professor  Jowett.  The  subjects  chosen 
by  the  two  writers  respectively  were,  '  The  Education  of 
the  World,'  and  '  The  Interpretation  of  Scripture.'  The 
other  five  Essayists  were  Dr.  Rowland  Williams,  Professor 
Baden-Powell,  the  Rev.  H.  B.  Wilson,  Mr.  C.  W.  Goodwin 
and  the  Rev.  Mark  Pattison. 

The  spring  and  summer  passed  away,  and  the  volume 
had  excited  but  little  attention.  The  appearance  of  an 
article  in  the  'Westminster  Review,'  followed,  first,  by  the 
autumn  Charge  of  Bishop  Wilberforce,  and  then  by  his 
article  in  the  '  Quarterly  Review'^  at  the  beginning  of  1861, 
gave  the  signal  for  a  wild  and  panic-stricken  agitation. 

'"Quarterly  Review,  January  1 86 1. 


CHAP.  XVI  PUBLICATION  OF  'ESSAYS       REVIEWS''      3 1 


Addresses,  memorials,  and  remonstrances  against  the  mis- 
chievous tendencies  of  the  boolc  poured  in  upon  the  Arch- 
bishops and  Bishops.  Inflammatory  language  was  freely- 
used  by  the  champions  of  orthodoxy ;  extracts  unfairly 
culled  from  the  Essays  were  widely  circulated ;  and  the 
Archbishops  were  entreated  to  take  action  against  the 
Essayists,  who  were  described  as  traitors  to  their  sacred 
calling,  and  as  guilty  of  moral  dishonesty. 

Stanley  had  from  the  first  declined  to  take  any  part  in 
the  volume.  He  was  keenly  alive  to  '  the  absurdity  of  en- 
deavouring to  produce  an  effect  on  a  public  already  terri- 
fied by  throwing  together  a  number  of  names  which  gather, 
not  strength,  but  weakness,  not  attractiveness,  but  repul- 
siveness,  from  this  concatenation.'  He  strongly  objected  to 
the  form  and  scheme  of  the  work.  '  In  a  composite  publi- 
cation '  he,  from  the  first,  recognised  'a  decided  blunder.' 
While  he  admitted  the  '  rare  merit '  of  Dr.  Temple's  essay, 
he  acknowledged  the  '  inexpediency  of  its  place.'  '  Jowett's 
essay,'  he  goes  on  to  add,  in  a  letter  written  shortly  after 
the  publication  of  'Essays  and  Reviews,' 

'  is  decidedly  the  next  best  —  too  negative  and  antagonistic, 
of  course,  but  wonderfully  fertile  of  thought,  and  really  con- 
taining no  just  ground  of  offence.  The  others  are  strangely 
crude.  Goodwin,  a  layman,  has  written  a  clear,  able  state- 
ment of  the  Mosaic  Cosmogony  ;  Wilson,  an  able  but  very 
irritating  essay  on  the  National  Church.  Pattison,  on  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  has  much  interesting  matter,  but  im- 
perfectly cooked.  The  two  others  appear  to  me  super- 
fluous.' 

On  the  question  of  the  credibility  of  miracles,  which  was 
raised  by  Professor  Baden-Powell's  essay,  he  took  up  a 
position  wholly  opposed  to  that  of  the  Essayist.  He  writes 
to  a  friend  in  July  i860  : 

'  I  suspect  that  the  controversy  respecting  miracles  must 
at  last  come  to  this  : 


32 


UFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


i860 


'  Will  the  advocates  of  Gospel  miracles  concede  that  they 
may  be  wrought  through  the  intervention  of  general  or 
natural  laws  ?  Will  their  opponents  concede  that  the 
grandeur  of  the  end  to  be  obtained  justifies  the  belief  that 
there  are  general  laws  on  this  subject  not  fully,  as  yet, 
known  to  us  ? 

'  Must  the  healing  or  quickening  miracles  of  Christ  be 
always  regarded  as  valuable  in  proportion  to  their  eccen- 
tricity, or  may  they  not  be  regarded,  rather,  as  valuable  in 
proportion  to  their  connection  with  His  moral  and  spiritual 
character,  or  aim  ? 

'  Must  the  miracles  of  Elisha  be  always  elevated  to  the 
same  degree  of  importance  as  the  miracles  of  Christ,  or 
may  they  not  be  silently  suffered  to  recede  into  the  back- 
ground of  sacred  history,  as  Elisha  himself  does,  compared 
with  Elijah  ? ' 

To  a  former  pupil,  who  was  consulting  him  on  the 
course  of  his  theological  reading,  he  again  expresses  his 
regret  for  the  publication  : 

'  I  am  sorry  to  think  that  you  should  have  been  troubled 
in  any  way  by  this  unhappy  controversy  as  to  the  "  Essays 
and  Reviews" — almost  sorry  that  you  should  have  read 
the  book.  At  the  same  time,  I  sincerely  believe  that  any- 
one who  reads  the  first,  sixth,  and  seventh  essays,  not  with 
a  desire  to  find  falsehood  in  them,  but  truth,  will  not  only 
derive  from  them  most  valuable  helps  to  the  study  of 
history  and  of  the  Bible,  but  will  also  have  his  faith  con- 
firmed and  his  charity  increased,  without  any  unsettlement 
of  mind  whatever. 

'The  other  Essays  contain  some  good  passages,  but  are, 
in  my  opinion,  so  unequal  to  those  which  I  have  named 
that  I  much  lament  that  they  should  ever  have  been 
published  together.' 

Few  men  regretted  more  deeply  than  Stanley  the  error 
of  judgment  which  had  been  committed  by  the  seven 
authors  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews.'  Neither  his  intimate 
personal  friendship  with  Professor  Jowett  and  Dr.  Temple, 
nor  his  sympathy  with  liberal  theology,  blinded  him  to  the 
impolicy  of  the  publication  and  to  the  offensive  tone  and 


CHAP.  XVI  THE  GROWING  AGlTATrON 


33 


tenor  of  some  of  the  Essays.  He  especially  censured  the 
generally  negative  character  of  the  volume.  '  No  book,'  he 
said,  'v^fhich  treats  of  religious  questions  can  hope  to  make 
its  way  to  the  heart  of  the  English  nation  unless  it  gives 
at  the  same  time  that  it  takes  away.' 

But  the  agitation  against  the  book  assumed  the  char- 
acter which  especially  excited  his  indignation.  No  effort 
was  made  to  discriminate  or  distinguish,  but  all  the  seven 
writers  were  involved  in  one  and  the  same  sweeping  censure, 
and  branded  with  the  same  charge  of  infidelity  or  atheism. 
The  champions  of  orthodoxy  rushed  into  print,  with  wild 
denunciations  of  the  Essayists,  and  with  dogmatic  asser- 
tions as  to  the  essentials  of  Christianity  which,  in  his 
opinion,  were  more  mischievous  than  the  language  used  by 
their  opponents.  Protests  were  signed  by  hundreds  of  men 
who  never  took  the  trouble  to  read  the  book  which  they 
condemned,  or  who  openly  avowed  their  reliance  upon  un- 
fair extracts,  in  comparison  with  which,  to  use  the  language 
of  Stanley,  'the  Hampden  extracts  were  white  as  wool.' 
The  injustice  of  such  an  attack  aroused  all  the  comba- 
tiveness  of  his  nature.  And  when  it  was  especially 
directed  against  Dr.  Temple  and  Professor  Jowett,  the  two 
men  who  least  deserved  obloquy,  and  had  most  to  lose  by 
it,  he  rushed  into  the  fray,  with  chivalrous  disregard  of  the 
personal  consequences  to  himself. 

In  January  1861,  immediately  after  the  publication  of 
Bishop  Wilberforce's  article  in  the  '  Quarterly  Review,' 
Stanley  was  requested  to  write  an  article  in  the  April 
number  of  the  'Edinburgh  Review'  on  'Essays  and 
Reviews.'  He  consented  to  do  so,  and  in  his  reply  to  the 
editor  indicated  part  of  the  ground  which  he  proposed  to 
take : 

'  No  doubt  the  "  Edinburgh "  ought  to  steer  a  middle 
course  between  the  bottomless  Charybdis  of  the  "  West- 
VOL.  II  D 


34  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  i86i 


minster"  and  the  barking  Scyllaof  the  "Quarterly,"  and  it 
seems  to  me  that  there  would  be  no  difficulty  whatever  in 
finding  such  a  position. 

'  In  the  first  place,  the  folly  of  the  project  of  this  volume 
might  be  condemned  strongly.  For  seven  men,  without 
real  agreement  of  view,  to  combine  as  if  they  had,  and  to 
combine,  moreover,  when  the  name  of  almost  every  one 
of  the  set  would  add  weakness  instead  of  strength  to  the 
others,  appears  to  me  a  practical  blunder,  of  which  I  cannot 
conceive  how  men  of  ability  could  be  guilty.  I  exonerate 
Temple,  because  he  gave  his  name  for  a  different  reason, 
and  one  highly  honourable  to  himself.  The  illusion  (for  it 
is  a  mere  illusion),  and  the  consequent  panic  —  as  of  a  con- 
spiracy against  Revealed  Religion  —  which  this  volume  has 
excited,  has,  I  consider,  put  back  the  progress  of  Biblical 
criticism  and  sound  theology  in  this  country  probably  for 
five  years. 

'  But,  secondly,  it  might  be  pointed  out  from  the  volume 
itself  how  groundless  this  panic  is.  The  book  comprises 
essays  as  different  from  each  other  as  those  which  usually 
appear  in  the  "  Edinburgh  "  or  "  Quarterly."  Temple's  was 
(in  substance)  a  sermon  preached  by  him  before  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford  two  years  ago,  and  heard,  I  believe,  with 
general  approbation,  and  attacked  only  by  Goldwin  Smith 
for  advocating  too  strongly  the  doctrine  of  special  Provi- 
dence. Pattison's  is  a  mere  scholastic  review  of  the 
eighteenth-century  divines,  which  might  have  appeared  in 
the  "  Quarterly  "  as  a  sequel  to  those  which  he  wrote  on 
Casaubon,  Huet,  and  Scaliger.  Jowett's  is  a  supplement  to 
his  Commentary,  written  in  a  more  constructive  style  than 
usual,  and,  had  it  appeared  separately,  and  without  his 
name,  it  would,  I  am  convinced,  have  been  hailed  as  a  con- 
siderable accession  to  Biblical  scholarship. 

'  The  others  are  very  different,  both  from  these  three  and 
from  each  other.  Wilson's,  the  ablest  of  the  four,  has  com- 
mitted the  unpardonable  rashness  of  throwing  out  state- 
ments, without  a  grain  of  proof,  which  can  have  no  other 
object  than  to  terrify  and  irritate,  and  which  have  no  con- 
nection with  the  main  argument  of  his  Essay.  Powell's  is 
a  mere  rechauffe  of  his  (to  me)  unintelligible  argument 
about  miracles,  though  I  believe  it  represents  the  common 
view  of  the  religious  world  much  more  nearly  than  they 
like  to  admit.    Goodwin's  is  a  clear,  but  offensive,  exposi- 


CHAP.  XVI 


ADDRESS  TO  THE  B/SHOPS 


35 


tion  of  the  relations  of  Genesis  and  geology.  Williams  is 
guilty  of  the  same  rashness  as  Wilson  —  on  a  larger  scale  — 
casting  Bunsen's  conclusions  before  the  public  without  a 
shred  of  argument  to  prepare  the  way  for  them  or  support 
them.' 

While  Stanley  was  preparing  his  article  for  the  '  Edin- 
burgh Review '  an  event  occurred  which,  in  his  opinion, 
accentuated  and  embittered  the  whole  crisis.  Protests 
and  remonstrances  were  accumulating  in  every  part  of 
England,  and  early  in  February,  1861,  a  number  of  the 
Bishops  met  at  Lambeth,  and  decided  to  reply  to  one  of 
the  addresses  in  such  a  general  form  as  would  virtually 
answer  other  appeals  of  a  similar  character.  The  address 
to  which  they  replied  was  couched  in  the  following  terms : 

'  We  wish  to  make  known  to  your  Grace  and  to  all  the 
Bishops  the  alarm  we  feel  at  some  late  indications  of  the 
spread  of  rationalistic  and  semi-infidel  doctrines  among 
the  beneficed  clergy  of  the  realm.  We  allude  especially  to 
the  denial  of  the  atoning  efficacy  of  the  Death  and  Passion 
of  our  Blessed  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ,  both  God  and  man,  for 
us  men  and  for  our  salvation,  and  to  the  denial  also  of  a 
Divine  Inspiration,  peculiar  to  themselves  alone,  of  the 
Canonical  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament. 

'  We  would  earnestly  beseech  your  Grace  and  your 
Lordships,  as  faithful  stewards  over  the  House  of  God,  to 
discourage  by  all  means  in  your  power  the  spread  of  specu- 
lations which  would  rob  our  countrymen,  more  especially 
the  poor  and  unlearned,  of  their  only  sure  stay  and  comfort 
for  time  and  eternity.  And  to  this  end  we  would  more 
especially  and  most  earnestly  beseech  you,  in  your  Ordina- 
tions, to  "lay  hands  suddenly  on  no  man"  till  you  have 
convinced  yourselves  (as  far  as  human  precaution  can 
secure  it)  that  each  deacon  who,  in  reply  to  the  question,  "  Do 
you  unfeignedly  believe  all  the  Canonical  Scriptures  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testament  "  answers,  "  I  do  believe  them," 
speaks  the  truth  as  in  the  sight  of  God.' 

The  reply  of  the  Archbishops  and  Bishops  ran  as 
follows : 


36 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


'Lambeth:  February  12,  1 86 1. 


'  Reverend  Sir,  —  I  have  taken  the  opportunity  of  meet- 
ing many  of  my  episcopal  brethren  in  London  to  lay  your 
address  before  them. 

'  They  unanimously  agree  with  me  in  expressing  the 
pain  it  has  given  them  that  any  clergyman  of  our  Church 
should  have  published  such  opinions  as  those  concerning 
which  you  have  addressed  us. 

'  We  cannot  understand  how  these  opinions  can  be  held 
consistently  with  an  honest  subscription  to  the  formularies 
of  our  Church,  with  many  of  the  fundamental  doctrines  of 
which  they  appear  to  us  essentially  at  variance. 

'  Whether  the  language  in  which  these  views  are  ex- 
pressed is  such  as  to  make  the  publication  an  act  which 
could  be  visited  in  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts,  or  to  justify 
the  synodical  condemnation  of  the  book  which  contains 
them,  is  still  under  our  gravest  consideration.  But  our 
main  hope  is  our  reliance  on  the  blessing  of  God  in  the 
continued  and  increasing  earnestness  with  which,  we  trust, 
that  we  and  the  clergy  of  our  several  dioceses  may  be 
enabled  to  teach  and  preach  that  good  deposit  of  sound 
doctrine  which  our  Church  teaches  in  its  fulness,  and  which 
we  pray  that  she  may,  by  God's  grace,  ever  set  forth  as  the 
uncorrupted  Gospel  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

'  I  remain,  reverend  Sir,  your  faithful  servant, 

'J.  B.  Cantuar. 

'  I  am  authorised  to  append  the  following  names  :  — 


C.  T.  Ebor 
A.  C.  London 
H.  M.  Durham 
C.  R.  Winton 
H.  Exeter 
G.  Peterborough 
C.  St.  David's 
A.  T.  Chichester 
J.  Lichfield 
S.  Oxon 


T.  Ely 

T.  V.  St.  Asaph 
J.  P.  Manchester 


R.  D.  Hereford 

J.  Chester 

A.  Llandaff 

R.  J.  Bath  and  Wells 

J.  Lincoln 

C.  Gloucester  and  Bristol 

W.  Sarum 

R.  Ripon 

J.  T.  Norwich 

J.  C.  Bangor 

J.  Rochester 

S.  Carlisle.' 


It  was  intended  that  the  letter  should  be  published  with 
the  address.    Unfortunately,  it  found  its  way  into  print 


CHAP.  XVI   HIS  CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  TAIT 


37 


through  the  unauthorised  hands  of  a  private  clergyman, 
without  any  indication  of  the  character  of  the  protest  to 
which  it  repHed. 

In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Tait,^  Stanley  challenged  the  action 
of  the  Bishops  collectively,  and  of  the  Bishop  of  London 
individually,  commenting  strongly  on  the  contradiction 
between  his  private  acquittal  of  three  of  the  Essayists 
(Professor  Jowett,  Dr.  Temple,  and  the  Rev.  Mark  Pattison) 
and  his  sweeping  censure  of  them  in  public.  He  regarded 
the  letter  as  an  attempt  to  curtail  the  liberties  of  the  Church 
by  an  episcopal  declaration  on  points  for  which  proper 
courts  were  provided.  In  his  view,  it  gave  high  sanction 
to  the  indiscriminate  charges  made  against  the  seven 
Essayists ;  it  fanned  the  flame  of  violent  language  with 
which  they  were  assailed  ;  it  gave  colour  to  the  charge 
that  several  clergymen  had  conspired  to  undermine  the 
Christian  faith  ;  it  branded  the  opinions  of  Dr.  Temple  and 
Professor  Jowett  as  inconsistent  '  with  an  honest  subscrip- 
tion to  the  formularies  of  our  Church,'  and  threatened 
aggressive  measures  against  the  five  clerical  Essayists 
which  would  render  their  position  as  clergymen  intolerable. 
'Truth,'  writes  Stanley  to  a  friend, 

'is  a  better  watchword  than  Freedom.  But  I  think  there 
is  a  better  one  still  —  at  least,  it  seems  to  me  more  acces- 
sible and  available  —  which  is  Justice.  It  is  the  excessive 
inequality  and  inequity  of  the  Episcopal  judgment  of  which 
I  complain.  There  is  no  desire,  no  attempt  at  what  I  should 
have  thought  even  the  stupidest  and  most  cautious  man 
might  seek  after  —  a  fair  distribution  of  praise  and  blame. 
"  False  weights  are  truly  an  abomination  to  the  Lord." ' 

In  Stanley's  opinion,  the  Episcopal  letter  offended 
against  every  principle  of  justice.  It  demanded  the  removal 
from  the  Church  of  five  distinguished  clergymen,  without 

*  For  the  full  correspondence  between  Stanley  and  Tait,  see  the  Life  of 
Archbishop  Tait,  vol.  i.  pp.  284-7,  ^'^^  PP-  308-12. 


38  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  i85i 

specifying  any  precise  charges.  It  involved  all  the  writers 
in  one  vague  anathema,  when  the  opinions  of  the  different 
essays  were  so  various  as  to  require  nice  discrimination. 
It  concealed  real  divergence  of  opinion  under  a  false 
appearance  of  unanimity.  Professing  to  be  deliberate,  it 
contained  one  name  which  was  appended  without  the 
knowledge  or  the  wish  of  the  supposed  assenting  Bishop. 

Stanley  had  little  sympathy  with  many  of  the  opinions 
expressed  in  '  Essays  and  Reviews ' ;  he  condemned  as 
strongly  as  possible  the  mode  of  publication ;  he  depre- 
cated the  assertion  of  the  difficulties  and  negations  of 
Christianity  without  the  qualification  of  its  counterpoising 
truths.  But  educated  divines  either  knew,  or  ought  to  have 
known,  the  existence  of  the  difficulties  to  which  the  Essays 
were  addressed.  The  wholesale  condemnation  was,  there- 
fore, in  his  opinion,  dishonest ;  and  he  also  felt  that  the 
views  of  tke  authors  ought  to  be  tolerated  in  the  Church, 
unless  it  were  to  lose  its  hold  on  the  intellectual  laity.  In 
the  question  between  the  Bishops  and  the  Essayists  was 
involved  the  whole  future  of  the  National  Church,  '  the 
learning  of  the  most  learned,  the  freedom  of  the  freest,  the 
reason  of  the  most  rational  Church  in  the  world.'  The 
♦  Episcopal  manifesto  seemed  to  him  to  proscribe  free  thought 

and  research  in  the  Church  of  England,  to  deny  to  the  clergy 
that  liberty  which  was  exercised  by  laymen,  to  proclaim  to 
all  the  young  and  honest  intellects  of  England  that  those 
who  entered  the  gates  of  the  ministry  must  leave  inde- 
pendent thought  behind  them.  The  final  issue,  as  it  ap- 
peared to  him,  was,  in  fact,  whether  the  Bible  was  to  be 
read,  or  was  to  remain  a  closed  book.  The  cause  of  liberty 
was,  as  he  believed,  brought  before  the  bar,  and  was  'plead- 
ing for  its  very  life.' 

The  events  of  the  first  few  months  of  1861  deepened 
Stanley's  forebodings.    In  February  and  March  the  Lower 


CHAP.  XVI    RUMOURED  ACTION  AGAINST  DR.  TEMPLE  39 


House  of  Convocation  had  expressed  its  concurrence  with 
the  Episcopal  censure  of  a  book  which  one  leading  speaker 
admitted  that  he  had  never  read,  and  both  Houses  had 
decided  on  further  proceedings  if  the  Committee  appointed 
to  examine  'Essays  and  Reviews'  reported  in  favour  of  a 
synodical  judgment.  During  the  same  months  it  seemed 
probable  that,  in  consequence  of  the  Bishops'  censure  and 
the  action  of  Convocation,  Dr.  Temple  would  be  called 
upon  to  resign  the  head-mastership  of  Rugby  School.  Men 
like  Dr.  Vaughan  (the  present  Dean  of  Llandaff),  Dr. 
Lightfoot  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Durham),  and  Dr.  Westcott 
(the  present  Bishop  of  Durham),  agreed  with  Stanley  in 
regarding  such  a  result  as  a  national  calamity,  as  well  as  in 
deprecating  the  violent  and  sweeping  charges  with  which 
the  Essayists  were  assailed.  Dr.  Vaughan,  fresh  from  the 
perusal  of  a  recently-published  volume  of  Dr.  Temple's 
sermon.s,  could  'conceive  no  graver  responsibility  than  that 
which  would  be  incurred  by  silencing  such  exhortations 
from  the  pulpit  of  Rugby  School.'    Dr.  Lightfoot  was 

'unable  to  conceive  a  greater  calamity,  happening  just  at 
this  crisis,  not  only  to  Rugby,  but  to  the  English  Church 
generally,  than  the  resignation  of  Dr.  Temple. 

'  Do  you  think  it  would  be  possible  to  circulate,  and 
obtain  signatures  to,  a  paper  expressing  confidence  in  Dr. 
Temple  as  an  instructor  of  boys  I  fancy  that  there  are 
a  great  number  of  moderate-minded  men  who  would  be 
ready  to  sign  such  a  paper,  and  whose  sense  of  justice 
revolts  against  the  indiscriminate  censure  with  which  all 
the  writers  have  been  assailed,  and  which  the  Bishops' 
manifesto  seems  to  sanction. 

'  It  is  very  much  to  be  apprehended,  I  fear,  that  the 
agitation  about  "  Essays  and  Reviews  "  will  have  the  effect 
of  dividing  men  into  two  well-defined  and  extreme  parties, 
the  one  consisting  of  irrational  champions  of  so-called 
orthodoxy,  the  other  of  men  who,  under  the  pressure  of 
opposition,  will  be  driven  into  a  position  of  reckless  scepti- 
cism, from  which  they  would  have  been  quite  safe  if  left 
to  themselves.    Such  an  act  as  Temple's  resignation  would 


40  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  i86i 


be  the  signal  for  an  internecine  war,  than  which  nothing 
could  be  more  fatal  to  religion  and  to  truth.' 

In  a  similar  strain  wrote  Dr.  Westcott : 

'  However  widely  I  may  differ  from  Professor  Jowett 
on  this  and  most  subjects  —  and  you  know  how  widely  I 
am  compelled  to  differ  from  him — I  feel  that  the  very 
gravest  evil  is  likely  to  befall  our  Church  from  the  vague 
charges  of  "infidelity,"  or  even  "atheism,"  which  are 
brought  against  him. 

'  But,  apart  from  the  injustice  which  is  done  to  individual 
writers  by  attributing  to  them  conclusions  which,  however 
logical  in  our  judgment,  they  would,  I  am  sure,  be  the  first 
to  repudiate,  there  is  a  still  greater  danger  in  answering  such 
reasoning  by  traditional  authority.  It  is  acknowledged  by 
all,  that  men  of  high  intellectual  culture  have  for  some 
years  shrunk  from  taking  Orders.  I  should  never  wish  to 
overestimate  the  value  of  intellect  in  sacred  functions,  and 
yet  it  would  be  a  serious  calamity  if  our  ministers,  as  a 
class,  should  fall  below  the  laity  in  sacred  learning.  Now 
I  fear  this  must  be,  and  in  fact  is  already,  the  case,  from 
the  belief  that  all  free  criticism,  however  reverent,  is  ban- 
ished from  questions  of  theology.  Some  men,  in  conse- 
quence of  this  belief,  suppress  at  once  all  the  spirit  of  inquiry 
which  lies  within  them,  and  bear  about  a  miserable  feeling 
of  dishonesty ;  others  hastily  assume  that  the  results  of  free 
inquiry  would  be  antagonistic  to  Church  principles,  and  re- 
fuse to  join  the  Church ;  and  even  the  labours  of  those 
who  would  show  that  there  is  a  real  harmony  between  "  old 
faiths"  and  recent  criticism  are  looked  on  with  suspicion.' 

From  these  and  similar  letters  Stanley  felt  assured  that 
he  had  behind  him  a  mass  of  support  which  had  hitherto 
found  no  expression,  except  in  abstention  from  the  agita- 
tion against  '  Essays  and  Reviews.'  His  personal  sym- 
pathies, his  hopes  of  the  Church,  his  desire  for  toleration 
and  expansion,  his  sense  of  justice,  were  involved  in  the 
issue  of  the  struggle ;  all  the  generosity  and  all  the  com- 
bativeness  of  his  nature  were  aroused.  Of  these  feelings, 
hitherto,  so  far  as  public  expression  went,  pent  up  within 


CHAP.  XVI    ARTICLE  IN  THE  'EDINBURGH  REVIEW'  4 1 


himself,  his  fiery  article  in  the  'Edinburgh  Review"^  was 
the  passionate  outcome.  The  article,  powerfully  written, 
and  full  both  of  'swing'  and  'sting,'  does  not  attempt  to 
defend  'Essays  and  Reviews':  it  rather  insists  upon  the 
injustice  with  which  the  writers  had  been  treated,  and 
labours  to  prove  that  many  of  the  men  who  had  taken 
the  lead  in  condemning  the  volume  were  themselves 
responsible  in  their  published  writings  for  the  same  opinions 
which  they  now  denounced  as  infidel.  The  well-timed 
appearance  of  the  article  added  to  the  great  effect  of  its 
powerful  writing.  In  the  opinion  of  Mrs.  Stanley,  it  affected 
the  whole  of  his  future  career.  '  I  am  very  glad  you  have 
written  this,'  says  his  mother  ;  'not  that  I  agree  with  it  all, 
but  because  it  puts  out  of  the  question  your  ever  being  a 
Bishop.'  'I  was  annoyed  at  the  time,'  said  Stanley  long 
afterwards,  '  but  now  I  see  she  was  quite  right.' 

The  article  had  poured  volleys  into  opponents  on  every 
side,  and  for  months,  and  even  years,  to  come,  it  involved 
him  in  controversy.  Richard  Congreve  wrote  to  deprecate 
his  allusion  to  Comte.  Dr.  Thomson,  afterwards  Arch- 
bishop of  York,  threatened  to  withdraw  from  the  list  of 
contributors  to  the  '  Dictionary  of  the  Bible  *  because  of  his 
reference  to  that  publication.  From  the  author  of  the  article 
in  the '  Westminster  Review,'  which  he  had  severely  handled, 
he  received  explanations  that  led  him  to  regret  the  severity 
of  his  language.  In  the  '  Saturday  Review '  appeared  an 
attack  upon  him  of  so  virulent  a  nature  that  three  of  the 
staff,  including  the  present  Lord  Justice  Bowen,  withdrew 
from  all  connection  with  that  journal.  Long  letters  were 
exchanged  between  him  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
upon  the  statement  which  he  made  in  the  '  Edinburgh 
Review'  —  and  repeated  in  a  speech  before  Convocation  in 
1864  —  that  the  seven  Essayists  had  acted  without  concert. 

'  Edinburgh  Review,  April  1 86 1. 


42 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


With  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  Connop  Thirlwall,  he 
engaged  in  a  still  more  lengthy  correspondence.  In  the 
'  Edinburgh  Review'  Stanley  had  identified  passages  in  the 
Bishop's  published  writings  with  '  almost  all  the  principles 
and  many  of  the  statements  '  which  Thirlwall,  in  the  Epis- 
copal manifesto,  now  denounced  as  '  incompatible  with  the 
profession  of  a  clergyman.'^  Challenged  to  prove  this 
accusation,  he  produced  the  passages  on  which  he  relied 
from  Thirlwall's  introduction  ^  to  Schleiermacher's  '  Essay 
on  St.  Luke,'  and  his  preface  to  the  translation  of  Niebuhr's 
'  History  of  Rome.'  The  closing  letter  in  the  correspond- 
ence indicates  Stanley's  view  of  the  course  which,  in  his 
opinion,  the  Bishops  should  have  adopted  : 

'  When  I  spoke  of  an  Episcopal  Declaration,  such  as 
might  have  allayed  the  popular  panic,  without  leaving  the 
painful  impression  which  has  been  created  by  the  letter  of 
February  12,  more  than  one  course  had  presented  itself  to 
me  as  fulfilling  these  conditions.  It  seemed  to  me  that,  if 
the  censure  were  severe,  it  should  distinctly  have  excepted 
those  portions  of  the  book  which  even  a  single  prelate 
thought  undeserving  of  the  censure ;  or  that,  if  such  a  dis- 
crimination was  impossible,  the  censure  should  have  ab- 
stained from  those  grave  imputations  which,  as  they  stand 
at  present,  without  any  public  contradiction  from  the  sub- 
scribers, apply  equally  to  all  the  writers  in  the  volume. 

'  It  seemed  to  me  also,  that  if  the  Bishops  thought  the 
book,  in  part  or  in  whole,  worthy  of  censure,  they  ought 
also  to  have  stated,  no  less  clearly,  the  danger  of  an  ignorant, 
indiscriminate  outcry,  and  the  difficulties  necessarily  at- 
tendant on  a  fearless  and  truthful  discussion  of  the  ques- 
tions which  the  book  professed  to  handle. 

^  The  same  charge  was  made  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  Essays  and  Revieivs 
A7iticipated,  the  authorship  of  which  was  at  the  time  attributed  to  George 
Eliot.  The  pamphlet  was  reviewed  in  the  Spectator,  and  drew  from  the 
Bishop  an  answer  in  that  paper.  The  Bishop's  Charge  of  1863  defends  his 
action  (see  Bishop  Thirlwall's  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  234,  and  his  Remains, 
vol.  ii.). 

*  Published  in  1825. 

1"  The  translation  was  made  in  conjunction  with  Julius  Hare,  and  pub- 
lished in  1828-32. 


CHAP.  XVI 


END  OF  THE  AGITATION 


43 


'  Any  one  of  these  courses  would  surely  have  tended  to 
allay  the  panic,  without  provoking  the  additional  distrust 
which,  on  all  sides,  the  Episcopal  letter  appears  to  have 
excited.' 

The  questions  raised  by  '  Essays  and  Reviews '  were 
finally  removed  to  the  law-courts  by  the  trials  of  Dr. 
Williams  and  Mr.  Wilson,  first  before  the  Dean  of  Arches 
(December  15th,  1862),  and  then,  on  appeal,  before  the 
Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  in  June  1863. 
Towards  the  fund  which  was  raised  for  the  defence  of  the 
Essayists  Stanley  subscribed  liberally.  But  the  following 
letter,  written  after  the  appeal  against  the  adverse  decision 
of  the  Dean  of  Arches,  proves  that  even  the  excitement  of 
legal  proceedings  did  not  bias  the  balance  of  his  judgment : 

'  Some  weeks  ago  G.  wrote  to  me  on  behalf  of  the 
Essay  and  Review  Fund,  reminding  me  (quite  properly)  of 
my  promise  to  subscribe  more,  if  more  were  needed.  I 
replied  that  I  should  be  glad  to  do  so  ;  but  added  that  as 
the  appeal  must  now  be  restricted  to  certain  definite  points, 
I  should  like  to  know  what  they  were,  in  order  to  know 
exactly  what  it  was  for  which  I  subscribed.  I  said  this, 
because  I  believed  that  a  promiscuous  appeal  against  all 
the  remaining  charges  would  be  very  imprudent,  and  would 
damage  the  real  stand  that  can  be  made  against  some  of 
them. 

'To  this  G.  returned  no  answer,  from  which  I  infer  that 
he  misunderstood  my  meaning.  I  have  not  the  slightest 
intention  of  withdrawing  my  support  to  the  cause.  All 
that  I  deprecated  was  giving  a  needless  support  to  mere 
obstinacy  or  rashness.  I  am  as  clearly  of  opinion  that 
they  ought  to  appeal  against  some  of  the  points  as  that 
they  ought  to  modify  their  own  language  on  the  other 
points.' 

The  final  judgment  of  the  Privy  Council,  from  which 
the  two  Archbishops  dissented,  was  delivered  by  Lord 
Chancellor  Westbury  on  February  8th,  1864.  Stanley  was 
present  in  Court. 

'  I  saw  at  once,  from  the  absence  of  the  two  Archbishops 


44 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1858-61 


and  the  fallen  countenance  of  Phillimore,  that  we  were  safe. 
But  I  had  not  expected  anything  so  clean  and  clear,  still 
less  that  the  Archbishops  would  have  concurred  in  the 
acquittal  on  the  score  of  Eternal  Punishment,  and  (what  I 
myself  should  have  considered  far  the  most  questionable 
part  of  the  statements,  in  a  legal  view)  Justification. 

'That  the  Church  of  England  does  not  hold  —  (i)  Verbal 
Inspiration,  (2)  Imputed  Righteousness,  (3)  Eternity  of 
Torment,  is  now,  I  trust,  fixed  for  ever.  I  hope  that  all 
will  now  go  on  smoothly,  and  that  the  Bible  may  be  really 
read  without  those  terrible  nightmares.    Thank  God  ! ' 

11  One  more  attempt  was  made  to  reopen  the  controversy.  A  resolution 
was  moved  in  June  1864,  in  both  Houses  of  Convocation,  synodically  con- 
demning '  Essays  and  Reviews,'  '  as  containing  teaching  contrary  to  the  doc- 
trine received  by  the  united  Church  of  England  and  Ireland,  in  common 
with  the  whole  Catholic  Church  of  Christ.'  Stanley,  then  Dean  of  West- 
minster, vigorously  opposed  the  resolution,  which  was  carried  by  a  large 
majority  (39  to  19).    See  Chapter  xxi. 


CHAP.  XVII 


TOUR  m  DENMARK 


45 


CHAPTER  XVII 
1859-1862 

TOUR  IN  DENMARK  — OBER-AMMERGAU  — PUBLICATION  OF 
'THE  EASTERN  CHURCH '  — MOUNT  ATHOS— DEATH  OF 
THE  PRINCE  CONSORT  — INVITATIDN  TO  ACCOMPANY  THE 
PRINCE  OF  WALES  TO  THE  EAST 

Professorial  lectures,  University  politics,  ecclesiastical 
controversies,  and  literary  work,  had  fully  occupied  Stanley 
since  he  finally  removed  his  home  from  Canterbury  to 
Oxford.  His  relaxation  was,  as  usual,  found  in  foreign 
travel.  In  1859  he  made  a  tour  through  Denmark,  North 
Germany,  and  Plolland.  In  i860  he  witnessed  the  Ober- 
Ammergau  Play,^  then  almost  unknown  in  England.  In 
1861  he  visited  Mount  Athos. 

In  the  Danish  tour,  which  he  made  in  1859  with  Hugh 
Pearson,  the  chief  object  of  attraction  was  Elsinore : 

'It  was  just  dusk  when  we  reached  it,  and  you  may 
suppose  how  H.  P.  and  I  wandered  out  in  search  of  the 
sea  and  the  Ghost.  It  was  a  very  humble  inn,  and  we 
found  the  landlord  and  a  somewhat  excitable  Dane  dis- 
cussing Hamlet  as  we  came  in. 

'The  next  morning  we  surveyed  the  whole  place.  It 
has  two  grand  and  separate  interests.  The  first  is  its 
natural  situation.  It  is  one  of  the  great  geographical  points 
of  the  world  —  the  entrance  to  the  Sound,  winding  away 
like  a  broad  river  towards  Copenhagen,  Sweden  imme- 
diately opposite,  and  Helsingborg  coming  out  almost  to 
meet  Helsingor,  "the  narrow  promontory"  (the  true  name 

^  Stanley  wrote  a  graphic  account  of  the  Play  in  Macmillati' s  Magazine 
for  October  i860. 


46 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


of  Elsinore).  Each  shore,  especially  the  Danish,  is  crowded 
with  villages,  and  the  Sound  itself  crowded  with  white 
sails  ;  whilst  the  centre  of  the  whole  scene  is  the  great 
palatial  Castle  of  Elsinore  —  Kronenborg,  built  (in  the  same 
style  as  the  other  Danish  palaces)  by  Frederick  II.,  father 
of  Christian  IV. 

'And  this  brings  me  to  the  second  charm  —  Hamlet. 
I  feel  now  that  I  have  got  to  the  bottom  of  all  that  there 
is  of  connection  between  the  play  and  the  country.  The 
real  story  of  Hamlet  throws  him  back  into  the  remotest 
legendary  Pagan  times.  The  name  means  "  fool,"  and  the 
part  which  he  plays  in  the  story  makes  him  a  type,  or 
caricature,  of  the  Jutlanders,  he  being,  in  the  legend,  a 
prince,  not  of  Denmark,  but  of  Jutland.  It  is  a  succession 
of  absurd  disguises  of  real  cunning  under  feigned  folly  or 
madness.  This,  they  say,  is  what  the  Jutlanders  still  are. 
But  in  Shakespeare  the  whole  scene,  as  well  as  the  whole 
of  the  manners  and  thoughts  of  the  story,  are  transferred 
to  the  Danes  of  his  own  time.  The  castle  of  Elsinore  had 
just  been  built  by  Frederick,  and  therefore  this  was  the 
only  Court  and  palace  of  which  Shakespeare  knew,  and  he 
has,  accordingly,  moved  the  place  and  persons  hither  from 
Jutland. 

'  The  Castle,  as  it  stands,  is  evidently  what  he  had  heard 
of,  and  what  he  has  represented,  standing  on  the  very  edge 
of  the  sea,  not,  indeed,  as  Shakespeare,  with  his  recollections 
of  Dover,  imagined,  on  a  bristling  cliff,  but  still  so  that  the 
waves  roar  beneath  the  platform.  The  "  Platform  "  is  the 
line  of  ramparts  which  runs  in  front  of  the  Castle.  There 
the  guards  are  still  pacing  to  and  fro  —  Bernardo,  Francisco, 
and  Marcellus ;  and  in  the  turns  and  windings  of  the  fortifi- 
cations you  can  see  how  the  Ghost  could  lead  the  Prince 
onwards  to  a  more  and  "  more  remote  part  of  the  Platform." 
There  is  no  Ghost  in  the  original  story  ;  but  there  is  a  ghost 
in  the  Castle  of  Elsinore,  an  ancient  David  Leo  Holger, 
buried  under  the  central  tower,  and  to  be  seen  from  time  to 
time,  with  his  white  beard,  like  Barbarossa's  red  beard,  grow- 
ing round  the  table  at  which  he  sleeps,  waiting  for  the  revival 
of  Denmark.  The  manners  and  forms  and  persons,  too, 
of  the  Court  are  taken  from  the  actual  time.  Frederick 
II.  and  Christian  IV.  were  Shakespeare's  contemporary 
sovereigns.  They  had  each  of  them  the  kind  of  mingled 
fierceness  and  philosophy  that  appears  in  Hamlet's  own 


CHAP.  XVII       STANLEY'S  'EASTERN  CHURCH 


47 


character.  Christian  IV.,  who  had  just  been  on  an  embassy 
to  England,  was  a  great  drinker  himself,  as  well  as  all  his 
companions,  and  hence  the  bitter  reproval  of  "  the  cus- 
tom more  honoured  in  the  breach  than  the  observance." 
Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  were  two  well-known 
courtiers  of  Christian  IV.,  whose  portraits  appear  side  by 
side  in  the  gallery  at  Fredericksborg.  Lutheranism  had 
just  been  firmly  established  in  Denmark,  and  therefore 
Hamlet  and  Horatio  go  to  study  in  Wittenberg. 

'  It  is  a  wonderful  proof  of  the  power  of  the  play  that 
the  names  are  now  fixed  in  Elsinore.  There  is  a  beautiful 
pleasure-ground  about  a  mile  from  the  town,  where  there 
is  a  Hamlet's  Terrace,  and  a  broken  pillar  surrounded  by 
trees  called  Hamlet's  ^ra^/^;  and  the  three  steamers  which 
run  between  Elsinore  and  Copenhagen  are  Hamlet, 
OpJielia,  and  Horatio.  The  whole  scene  of  the  Sound  is 
admirably  described  in  Southey's  "  Life  of  Nelson,"  and  the 
battle  of  Copenhagen  ends  the  connection  with  England 
which  Hamlet  had  begun.' 

The  tour  of  the  following  year  (i860)  was  too  short  to 
be  really  restorative  of  Stanley's  vigour.  Its  benefit  was 
soon  exhausted  by  the  steady  strain  of  lectures  and  tuition, 
the  labour  of  preparing  for  the  press  the  '  Lectures  on  the 
Eastern  Church,'  and  by  the  excitement  into  which  he  was 
thrown  by  the  publication  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews.' 

Stanley's  '  Eastern  Church  '  was  published  in  March  1861. 
The  volume  makes  no  pretence  to  the  completeness  of 
*  Sinai  and  Palestine,'  the  most  finished  and  elaborate  of  all 
his  writings.  But  it  is,  in  some  respects,  a  more  charactei^- 
istic  product  of  his  literary  methods.  In  his  Introductory 
Lectures  as  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History,  Stanley  had 
referred  to  the  proverbial  dryness  of  his  subject,  and  com- 
pared it  to  the  valley  of  dry  bones  in  the  Prophet's  vision. 
In  '  The  Eastern  Church '  he  has  made  the  dry  bones  live,  and 
has  imparted  to  relics,  institutions,  and  characters,  a  living, 
human  interest.  And  he  has  achieved  his  success  by 
methods  which  were  essentially  part  of  himself.  So  far  as 
was  possible,  the  history  was  studied  on  the  exact  spot,  and 


48 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


the  appropriate  atmosphere,  the  local  colour,  the  lifelike 
details,  are  reproduced  with  picturesque  power.  The  relics 
of  the  past  are  treated  as  living,  human  spirits,  or  as  the 
instruments  of  living,  human  spirits,  whose  influence  is  at 
work  on  all  sides  around  us  for  our  own  and  for  all  future 
ages.  Every  similarity,  contrast,  or  analogy,  with  whatever 
is  most  familiar  in  our  own  institutions  or  life,  is  noted,  so 
that  new  ideas  may  be  brought  home  to  the  most  ordinary 
understanding.  No  effort  is  made  to  drag  the  reader  over 
the  whole  field  of  Church  history  :  the  lesser  events  are  only 
touched  upon  so  as  to  preserve  the  thread  of  continuity ; 
the  leading  persons,  the  important  scenes,  the  critical  stages, 
are  studied  in  all  the  detail  which  is  possible,  and  stand  out 
in  overwhelming  prominence  by  the  effacement  of  sub- 
ordinate occurrences.  In  the  Lecture  on  the  Council  of 
Nicaea  these  literary  methods  are  strikingly  exemplified  : 
the  Oriental  character  of  the  assembly,  the  local  colouring, 
the  journeys  of  the  Bishops,  the  elaborate  portraiture  of  the 
notabilities,  the  first  meeting  of  the  Council,  are  all  placed 
before  the  reader  with  that  fulness  and  amplification  of 
detail  which  are  essential  to  vivid  realisation,  and  which 
are,  therefore,  in  the  end  the  best  economy  of  time. 

The  work  of  preparing  these  Lectures  for  the  press,  con- 
tinued in  the  midst  of  other  engrossing  interests,  left  him 
greatly  in  need  of  rest  and  change  of  scene.  In  August 
1 861  Stanley  set  out  on  a  lengthy  expedition  with  his 
sister  Mary,  travelling  through  Hungary  and  the  Carpa- 
thians to  Constantinople,  and  thence  to  Mount  Athos, 
returning  by  Athens  and  Corfu  to  England. 

For  months  before  he  left  England,  at  the  moment  of 
his  departure,  and  throughout  his  journey,  the  grave  ques- 
tions stirred  by  '  Essays  and  Reviews  '  occupied  his  mind. 
With  the  personalities  of  the  controversy,  so  far  as  they 
affected  himself,  he  concerned  himself  little.    Even  the 


CHAP.  XVII       ANXIETY  ON  CHURCH  AFFAIRS 


49 


savage  attack  of  the  'Saturday  Review'  he  ascribed  to 
'the  stomach,'  and  passed  by.  But  the  fate  of  his  friends 
and  the  prospects  of  the  Church,  if  the  opponents  of 
'Essays  and  Reviews'  succeeded  in  narrowing  its  pale, 
disquieted  him  more  deeply  than  even  his  most  intimate 
associates  had  realised.  On  the  eve  of  crossing  to  Calais 
he  wrote  to  Pearson  : 

'  I  wish  I  could  leave  Church  affairs  in  a  better  state. 
I  do  not  think  that  anyone  knows  what  a  pang  it  gives 
me  to  think  of  Sarum  and  S.  Oxon  combining  with  Win- 
chester and  Carlisle  to  tear  the  Church  to  pieces,  and 
render  a  quiet  faith  impossible.  What  good  can  be  done 
to  any  human  being  by  turning  the  most  sacred  doctrines 
into  mere  weapons  of  offence  against  the  best  men  in  the 
Church,  and  trying  to  keep  out  of  Orders  those  who  might 
else  be  successors  of  Arnold  and  of  Milman .'' ' 

Throughout  the  whole  tour  the  future  of  the  Anglican 
Church  occupied  his  thoughts.  At  Herrnhut,  at  the  Con- 
stantinopolitan  Synod,  in  the  monasteries  of  Mount  Athos, 
it  guided  the  direction  of  his  conversations  with  a  Mora- 
vian Bishop,  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  the  Abbot  of 
a  Bulgarian  monastery.  The  journey  was  full  of  varied 
interest.  To  Herrnhut,  the  cradle  of  the  Moravian  religion, 
he  was  attracted  by  the  vain  hope  of  discovering  any  record 
of  John  Wesley's  visit  to  Count  Zinzendorf  in  1738.  At 
Gorlitz  he  found  the  tomb  of  Jacob  Bohmen,  and  a  New 
Jerusalem  like  that  of  Nicon  at  Moscow,  or  of  Bernardino 
Caloto  at  Varallo.  Cracow  interested  him  not  only  as  the 
burial-place  of  Copernicus,  Sobieski,  and  Kosciusko,  but  as 
'  the  filthiest  of  European  capitals.'  It  was  his  starting- 
point  for  the  drive  through  the  Carpathian  Mountains. 
The  discomfort  and  difficulties  of  his  expedition  across  the 
range  compelled  him  to  make  a  series  of  forced  marches. 

'Hopes  were  held  out  of  reaching  Kesmarck  at  10.30 
P.M.,  which,  as  there  was  a  bright  moonlight,  seemed  not 
VOL.  II  E 


50  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  i86i 


too  late  an  hour.  By  this  moonlight,  in  fact,  we  crossed 
the  Carpathian  ridge,  and  rejoiced  in  its  light  till  mid- 
night. But  midnight  came,  and  the  moon  set,  and  no 
Kesmarck.  By  successive  shocks,  and  by  the  natural  sub- 
sidence of  the  bags,  we  had  by  this  time  sunk  so  low  into 
the  narrow  trough  of  the  cart  that  our  position  well  corre- 
sponded with  the  increasing  depression  of  our  spirits. 
"  Then  like  a  chorus  the  passion  deepened,"  for  the  wilds, 
lengthening  as  we  went,  suggested  the  awful  thought  that 
the  driver  had  lost  his  way.  Village  after  village,  all 
plunged  in  the  deepest  darkness  and  sleep,  at  long  inter- 
vals were  passed,  but  no  Kesmarck.  Al  last  a  solitary 
light  appeared.  It  was  the  watch-tower  of  Kesmarck.  All 
else  was  dark. 

'It  was  the  chill  hour  of  2  a.m.  .  .  .  Where  was  the 
Crown  Inn }  No  indications  of  aught  like  it.  As  a  last 
resource  Horagch^  returned  to  the  town  to  seek  the  lonely 
watchman  on  the  lighted  tower.  On  his  way  he  met  a 
gipsy,  the  one  wanderer  through  the  streets  of  Kesmarck, 
"  homeless  and  houseless  "  at  that  dark  hour;  and  under 
the  gipsy's  guidance  we  arrived  at  the  gates  of  "  the 
Crown."  .  .  .  The  landlord  emerged.  "  One  room!'  Into 
that  was  put  M.  S.  instantly.  Now  for  another.  The 
chambermaid,  completing  her  toilette,  and  snatching  up  a 
sleeping  child  from  a  bed  beside  that  which  she  had  va- 
cated, vanished  into  darkness.  And  there  A.  P.  S.  was  at 
last  ensconced,  and  in  five  minutes  the  jolting  Britska,  the 
ever-lengthening  shades  of  night  and  ever-receding  Kes- 
marck, dissolved  into  the  troubled  dreams  which  carry  on 
the  recollections  of  the  day,  even  into  the  most  profound 
repose. 

'  In  spite  of  all  this,  the  Carpathians  are  well  worth  see- 
ing. Lomnitz  "did  burst  upon  us  in  unclouded  glory." 
By  sunrise,  by  sunset,  in  noonday,  and  by  moonlight,  did 
that  glorious  mountain  and  his  glorious  brethren  cheer  our 
path  and  reward  our  toils.  In  beauty  and  grandeur  of 
outline  they  exceed  any  like  range  of  the  Alps.  They  are, 
perhaps,  surpassed  by  the  Carrara  peaks,  by  the  mountains 
of  Greece  and  of  southern  Asia  Minor,  and  by  one  aspect 
of  the  Sinaitic  mountains.  But  else  I  know  nothing  which 
approaches  them.  Of  British  mountains,  the  Coolin  hills 
have  the  nearest  resemblance.    And  there  is  one  view  o£ 


The  courier. 


CHAP.  XVII 


PESTH  IN  1 86 1 


51 


the  range  which,  combining  them  with  a  vast  prospect  of 
the  plains  of  Hungary,  and  with  the  fortress  of  the  Zapolyas 
for  its  central  feature,  must  take  its  place  amongst  the  finest 
of  European  views  that  I  have  set  eyes  upon.  .  .  .' 

Pesth  was  reached  on  August  19th,  186 1,  the  eve  of 
St.  Stephen's  Day  —  'not  the  first  Martyr,  but  the  first 
King  of  Hungary.'  At  7.30  the  next  morning  Stanley 
was  in  the  streets  to  witness  the  '  really  national  procession 
of  the  Prince  Primate,  Archbishop  of  Gran,  magnates  and 
commons,  schools  and  families,  and  trades  and  students, 
following  from  church  to  church  the  withered  hand  of 
the  first  Apostolic  King  of  Hungary.' 

The  moment  at  which  Stanley  arrived  in  Pesth  was  a 
most  important  crisis  in  Hungarian  history.  Hungary 
was  not  one  of  the  hereditary  States  of  the  Austrian 
Empire.  Her  union  with  Austria  was  personal,  consisting: 
in  the  identity  of  the  reigning  sovereign.  Her  Diets  and 
County  Assemblies  could  not  be  arbitrarily  overridden, 
and  separate  Hungarian  Ministers  preserved  the  form  of 
national  independence.  To  maintain  these  relations,  as 
defined  in  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  1723,  and  embodied 
in  the  Constitutional  Laws  of  1848,  was  the  object  of  the 
National  Party  in  Hungary.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Austrian  Centralists  desired  to  establish  for  all  the  hetero- 
geneous States  of  the  Empire  a  central  Parliament,  which 
was  to  be  held  at  Vienna.  With  this  object,  a  new 
Constitution,  which  marked  the  triumph  of  the  German 
Liberals  under  Baron  von  Schmerling,  was  issued,  and  the 
Hungarian  Diet  was  convened  in  March  1861  to  confirm 
the  new  form  of  government.  Against  these  proceedings 
the  Hungarian  Nationalists  firmly  protested  in  two  masterly 
addresses.  The  result  was  the  dissolution  of  the  Hun- 
garian Diet. 

To  the  two  leaders   of  the  Hungarian  Nationalists, 


52 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


Francis  Deak^  and  Baron  Joseph  Eotvos,  Stanley  was 
introduced.  He  was  present  at  the  meeting  of  the  Diet 
in  which  a  final  protest  against  the  action  of  the  Govern- 
ment was  moved  by  Deak,  '  a  huge,  farmer-like  man,  with 
strong,  shrewd  features.'  On  August  22nd  the  Chambers 
were  dissolved. 

'This  morning  at  11  a.m.  we  went  to  be  in  good  time  for 
the  final  dissolution.  It  took  place  simultaneously  at  noon 
in  both  Houses.  We  chose  the  Lower  House.  It  was  still 
more  striking  than  the  night  before.  Every  place  was  filled, 
in  House  and  galleries.  .  .  .  The  dissolution  came  in  the 
form  of  a  message  sent  to  be  read  by  the  President,  com- 
manding their  dissolution  on  pain  of  being  dispersed  by 
an  armed  force.  It  was  read  in  a  loud,  clear  voice  by  one 
of  the  secretaries  of  the  House,  amidst  loud  occasional  cries 
of  disapproval  and  derision.  One  short  speech  immediately 
followed  from  an  old  man  with  a  white  beard.  I  know  not 
what.  Then  came  the  most  striking  moment  of  the  whole. 
Deak  rose  in  his  place  amidst  one  universal  shout  of 
"  Long  life."  I  had  a  good  view  of  him,  and  was  very 
much  impressed  with  his  appearance ;  his  immovable, 
massive  figure,  and  his  strong,  calm,  lion-like,  yet  profoundly 
mournful,  countenance,  almost  expressed  what  he  was  say- 
ing as  if  we  had  been  able  to  understand  him.  It  was  ap- 
parently a  succession  of  brief  resolutions,  implying  that 
they  yielded  to  force,  and  to  force  only ;  each  resolution 
being  adopted  by  the  simultaneous  rising  of  the  whole 
House.  This  was  followed  by  a  speech  from  the  President, 
thanking  the  House  for  his  election,  and  taking  farewell. 
Finally  the  minutes  were  entered.  Deak  rose  and  left  the 
House,  and  they  all  followed  in  a  body. 

'  It  was  certainly  the  finest  political  sight  I  have  ever 
witnessed,  and  there  was  an  affectionateness  with  which 
they  crowded  round  each  other,  their  arms  about  each 
others'  necks,  kissing  each  other  in  farewell,  shaking  hands 
for  the  last  time  with  the  President,  and  an  actual  grief 
visible  on  the  faces  of  such  men  as  Deak  and  Eotvos,  which 
gave  a  touching  personal  interest  to  the  stern  dignity  of 


8  Francis  Dectk,  Hungarian  Stalesmati,  with  a  preface  by  Mountstuart  E. 
Grant  Duff,  M.P.    London,  1880. 


CHAP.  XVII         CONSTANTINOPLE  REVISITED 


53 


the  political  catastrophe.  Eotvos  said  to  us,  as  we  came 
out,  "  Vous  avez  vu  le  premier  acte  d'un  grand  drame."  ' 

To  '  Constantinople  revisited  '  Stanley  returned,  excited 
by  all  the  additional  charms  which  his  studies  on  the 
Eastern  Church,  the  events  of  the  Crimean  War,  and  his 
sister's  work  in  the  Hospital  of  Koulalee,  had  invested  the 
Ottoman  capital.  Of  the  new  sights  that  the  city  afforded 
him,  the  most  interesting  was  his  interview  with  the 
Patriarch : 

' ....  I  should  say,  by  way  of  preface,  that  we  have 
arrived  at  a  very  critical  moment  in  the  history  of  the 
Eastern  Church.  They  have  on  their  hands  two  or  three 
controversies,  to  them  more  important  than  "  Es.says  and 
Reviews  "  can  be  to  us.  First,  there  has  been  a  change 
lately  made  in  the  election  of  the  Patriarch.  The  "Twelve 
Thrones"  —  i.e.  the  greater  bishops  —  who  used  to  elect 
him  have  been  superseded  by  a  mixed  assembly  of  bishops 
and  laity,  and  the  present  Patriarch,  after  a  violent  contest, 
in  which,  as  at  the  Second  Council  of  Ephesus,  the  bishops 
are  said  to  have  pulled  each  others'  beards,  is  the  first- 
fruits  of  the  new  system.  His  rival,  Anthoinus,  who  had 
been  Patriarch  before,  and  who  is  said  to  be  the  abler  man 
of  the  two,  has  retired  to  Mount  Athos,  where  we  hope  to 
see  him.  Another  still  more  pressing  controversy  is  the 
Bulgarian.  The  Bulgarians  have  caught  the  contagion  of 
nationalities,  and  wish  to  have  bishops  of  their  own  race 
and  language.  .  .  . 

'We  entered  the  Synod.  It  was  held  in  an  oblong 
room  with  a  divan  running  round  it.  In  the  corner 
was  seated  the  "CEcumenical  Patriarch,  the  Bishop  of 
New  Rome,  His  All-Holiness,  Joachim."  Along  the  other 
two  sides  of  the  room  were  the  thirteen  bishops  who 
happened  to  be  at  the  Synod.  We  were  introduced  to  the 
Patriarch,  the  dragoman  having  first  kissed  his  hands  in 
our  behalf.  We  were  then  motioned  to  sit,  A.  P.  S. 
next  the  Patriarch.  Pie  then,  with  a  considerable  degree 
of  tact  and  dignity,  introduced  us  by  successive  waves  of 
the  hand  to  each  of  the  bishops,  mentioning  each  by  the 
name  of  his  see.  Next  to  the  Patriarch  was  "  Ephesus  "  (the 
bishop  of  the  diocese),  then  "  Heraclea,"  then  "Cyzicus," 


54  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1861 


"  Chalcedon,"  "  Nicaea."  The  rest  were  more  obscure  ;  two 
from  the  disturbed  Bulgaria  —  "Sophia"  and  "  Puslawa." 
You  may  imagine  how  my  heart  leaped  within  me  at  hear- 
ing the  sound  of  these  words,  and  accordingly  I  begged  the 
dragoman  to  express  "  how  highly  gratifying  it  was  to  hear 
the  enumeration  of  names  so  famous  in  history."  The  Pa- 
triarch, after  a  pause,  begged  that  I  would  speak  in  Greek. 
I  declined,  but  invited  Mr.  Clarke  to  say  a  few  words,  which 
he  did,  intimating  that  I  was  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical 
History  at  Oxford.  I  then  (through  the  dragoman)  in- 
formed the  Bishop  of  Nicasa  about  my  visit  to  Nicaea  and 
my  interest  in  the  Council,  and  asked  one  or  two  questions 
about  the  spot.  He  confirmed  all  that  I  had  seen,  with 
the  addition  that  the  tree  by  the  shores  of  the  lake  marked 
the  situation  of  Constantine's  throne. 

'  I  asked,  in  like  manner,  the  Bishop  of  Chalcedon  some 
questions  about  his  Council,  and  then  put  some  general 
inquiry  to  the  Patriarch  about  the  antiquities  of  Constanti- 
nople and  the  burial-place  of  Constantine.  Ephesus,  who 
corresponds  in  dignity  to  York  (being  the  occupier  of  the 
greatest  see  of  this  part  of  the  world  till  Constantinople 
arose),  said  but  little.  Most  of  the  antiquarian  questions 
were  referred  to  Heraclea,  who  evidently  was  regarded  as  the 
chief  luminary  of  the  Synod.  He  was  a  very  intelligent  old 
man,  and  asked  whether  I  had  ever  heard  "  Canning  "  (this 
is  the  name  by  which  Lord  Stratford  is  always  known)  speak 
of  him  ;  to  which  I  was  obliged  to  reply  that  I  had  not,  but 
that  I  would  certainly  speak  of  him  to  Lord  Stratford. 

'  I  then  begged  to  know  whether  the  fame  of  any  bishop 
or  theologian  of  so  remote  a  Church  as  the  English  had 
reached  his  All-Holiness.  "  No  one,  except  that  once, 
eighteen  years  ago,  he  had  seen  a  Bishop  of  London  pass 
through  on  his  way  from  India." 

'  I  then  suggested  to  the  dragoman  to  propose  the 
Bulgarian  question.  Not  if  the  seven  Essayists  had  been 
named  in  the  Synod  at  Fulham  could  the  faces  of  the  pre- 
lates have  grown  longer  and  darker  than  they  did  on 
hearing  this  ominous  word.  For  a  minute  or  two  there  was 
a  silence.  I  broke  it  by  saying,  through  the  dragoman, 
"  There  is  a  somewhat  analogous  case  in  England.  In  a 
corner  of  the  island  is  a  small  tribe  (the  Welsh),  with  a 
language  and  nationality  of  its  own,  which  is  always 
insisting  on  having  bishops  who  can  speak  its  language. 


CHAP.  XVII 


MOUNT  ATHOS 


55 


The  English,  on  the  contrary,  desire  that  the  bishops  should 
not  be  confined  to  the  natives  of  this  little  tribe,  lest  the 
civilisation  and  learning  of  that  part  of  the  country  should 
suffer  in  consequence.  This  seems  to  be  the  case  in  Bul- 
garia." The  Patriarch  listened,  but  vi^as  not  quite  w^illing  to 
accept  the  analogy,  maintaining  that,  in  point  of  fact,  Bul- 
garians were  promoted  indiscriminately  to  clerical  and  epis- 
copal offices  with  the  Greeks.  "  We  ask  no  questions 
whether  a  man  is  a  Greek  or  Bulgarian.  If  he  is  fit,  we 
appoint  him.  Is  it  not  so.''"  (turning  to  Ephesus  and  Hera- 
clea).  "  And  there  are  actually  present  here  two  bishops  who 
are  Bulgarians."  .  .  .  The  Patriarch,  having  now  broken 
the  ice,  proceeded  to  speak  of  his  predecessor.  "  It  is  true 
he  is  at  Mount  Athos,  but  so  far  from  his  being  in  a  dun- 
geon, there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  dungeon  in  Mount  Athos. 
He  is  lodged  in  the  very  best  convent,  after  the  manner  in 
which  all  distinguished  guests  are  received.  I  hope  that 
you  will  see  him,  and  make  a  report  of  his  condition  with 
the  utmost  impartiality  and  exactness."  Of  course  I  as- 
sented. During  this  interview  pipes,  sweetmeats,  and 
coffee  had  been  handed  about.  We  rose,  and  they  rose, 
and,  all  mutually  bowing,  we  retired.' 

At  Constantinople  Stanley  parted  from  his  sister,  who 
visited  Scutari,  Koulalee,  and  the  Crimea.*  Stanley  him- 
self went  on,  with  Professor  Clarke,  to  Mount  Athos.  The 
Holy  Mountain  was  reached  in  September  1861. 

'  The  peninsula  of  Athos  contains  no  towns  that  are 
famous  in  Greek  history ;  it  has  no  connection  with  Greek 
mythology.  Until  the  monastic  system  fastened  upon  it 
as  a  refuge  from  the  storms  which  raged  round  the  Byzan- 
tine Empire,  it  remained  unoccupied  by  either  history  or 
religion.  The  monasteries  are  twenty  in  all,  with  several 
inferior  establishments  dependent  upon  them  —  all  inde- 
pendent of  each  other,  but  all  under  a  common  Govern- 
ment, held  at  a  town  in  the  centre  of  the  peninsula.  In 
this  respect,  as  in  many  others,  there  are  only  two  institu- 
tions in  the  world  with  which,  as  far  as  I  know,  they  can 
be  at  all  compared  ;  and  that  is  the  two  English  univer- 
sities, the  colleges  being  like  the  monasteries,  the  Gov- 

*  Miss  Stanley's  account  of  'Ten  Days  in  the  Crimea,'  prefaced  by  a  short 
note  from  her  brother,  appeared  in  Macmillan's  Magazine  in  1861. 


56 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


eminent  like  the  University  Council.  To  many  people 
it  might  be  tedious  to  go  the  whole  round  of  the  monas- 
teries, but  to  me  it  was  certainly  not  so.  It  became  a 
matter  of  curiosity  to  see  the  difference  of  each  from  each, 
how  we  should  be  received,  &c.,  what  varieties  of  intelli- 
gence or  of  Government  there  were,  what  element  of  the 
different  races  of  the  Eastern  Church  prevailed  in  each. 
There  was  one  great  drawback  —  the  language.  Clarke 
could  talk  some  Greek,  Georgio  could  interpret,  and  I 
could  follow  enough  to  guess  what  was  said.  But  to  have 
been  able  to  converse  would  have  made  an  immense  differ- 
ence, as  they  were  extremely  communicative.' 

Stanley  was  reluctantly  obliged  to  leave  unseen  the  four 
monasteries  in  the  south-west  corner  of  the  peninsula,  be- 
cause Professor  Clarke  was  forced  to  press  onwards  by 
land  to  Salonica.  Arrived  at  the  Consulate  of  Salonica, 
he  found  the  English  Consul  on  the  point  of  starting  on 
a  mission  to  Mount  Athos.  A  complicated  dispute  had 
arisen  between  the  different  monasteries.  Affairs  reached 
a  deadlock.  The  Abbot  of  Coutloumoussi  claimed  English 
nationality,  and  had,  as  an  Ionian,  relied  on  his  appeal  to 
the  English  Consul  of  Salonica.  At  the  latter's  sugges- 
tion, the  dispute  had  been  referred  to  the  Synod  for  recon- 
sideration, and  it  was  at  this  juncture  that  he  had  deter- 
mined to  visit  the  Holy  Mountain  in  order  to  promote  the 
general  pacification.  Stanley  welcomed  the  opportunity 
of  completing  his  tour  of  the  monasteries.  The  party 
consisted  of  Stanley,  the  English  Consul,  his  dragoman, 
and  '  a  very  intelligent  young  Scotchman,  settled  here  as 
missionary  to  the  Spanish  Jews.' 

'  As  soon  as  our  approach  was  seen  from  the  hill  the 
bells  of  the  Convent  began  to  ring,  and  when  we  entered 
the  courtyard  the  grateful  abbot  and  his  monks  were  there 
with  unfeigned  joy  to  receive  us.  We  were  immediately 
taken  to  the  church,  and  a  Te  Deum  was  celebrated  for 
our  arrival.  It  was  certainly  a  curious  and  impressive 
sight.    There  was  an  unmistakable  sincerity  of  gratitude 


CHAP.  XVII 


MOUNT  ATHOS 


57 


in  the  service.  The  name  of  Victoria  was  distinctly  audible 
in  the  Greek  prayers.  The  congregation  before  whom  the 
service  was  performed  consisted  of  three  persons  —  the 
English  Consul,  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  minister,  and  an 
Oxford  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History.  I  whispered 
to  the  Scot,  "  If  you  will  promise  not  to  inform  against  me 
to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbur}',  I  will  promise  not  to 
inform  against  you  to  the  General  Assembly." 

'Then  took  place  a  series  of  receptions  in  the  Convent. 
.  .  .  At  every  stage  the  bells  were  rung ;  at  every  inter- 
view the  same  formalities:  ten  times  that  day  were  the  sweet- 
meats and  coffee  served  round  to  us.  .  .  .  It  was  evident 
that  our  arrival  was  an  event  of  the  first  magnitude.  Things 
had  arrived  at  a  deadlock  in  the  Synod.  Four  monas- 
teries only  out  of  the  twenty  had  taken  the  part  of  Cout- 
loumoussi.  But  of  these  four,  one  was  the  mighty  Laura ; 
and  of  the  Laura,  the  representative  in  the  Synod  was 
the  great  Melchizedek,  by  universal  consent  the  most 
powerful  personage  in  the  whole  Mountain.  .  .  . 

'  The  cause  of  the  adhesion  of  Melchizedek  to  the 
English  party  will  hardly  bear  investigation.  Some  years 
ago  a  monk  at  the  Laura  was  undergoing  some  kind  of 
punishment  —  hanging  with  his  head  downwards,  or  the 
like  — and  Melchizedek  was  told  that  he  was  dying.  "  Non- 
sense !  "  said  Melchizedek.  But  the  man  did  die,  and  M. 
was  charged  with  his  murder,  and  in  that  extremity  be- 
thought himself  that  his  grandfather  had  been  an  Ionian, 
flew  for  protection  to  the  late  Consul  of  Salonica,  obtained 
it,  and  has  ever  since  been  a  staunch  adherent  of  our 
interests.  However,  he  was  the  pillar  on  which  the  three 
weaker  monasteries  leaned,  and  his  name  was  repeated  so 
often  as  to  make  the  conversation  sound  like  a  chapter  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  At  last  a  noise  was  heard  on  the 
stairs,  as  if  an  elephant  was  approaching,  and  Melchizedek 
entered.  He  is,  or  rather  would  be  if  his  legs  were  in 
proportion  to  the  rest  of  his  body,  one  of  the  hugest  men 
I  ever  saw.  His  head,  his  neck,  his  shoulders,  his  breast, 
his  hands,  are  those  of  a  giant.  Anything  less  like  the 
ideal  Melchizedek,  or  less  like  the  ideal  King  of  the  Holy 
Mountain,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive :  coarse,  fierce, 
worldly,  full  of  boisterous  jokes  ;  capable,  I  should  think,  of 
any  act,  incapable  of  any  sentiment.  There  was  no  mis- 
taking his  absolute  predominance.     He  evidently  was 


58 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


very  entertaining  —  hardly  ever  spoke  without  producing 
roars  of  laughter.' 

From  this  scene  of  debate,  intrigue,  and  festivity, 
Stanley  started  alone  to  visit  the  group  of  monasteries  in 
the  south-west  corner  of  the  peninsula  which  he  had  left 
unseen. 

'  Great  are  the  pleasures  of  companions,  great  the 
triumph  of  following  in  the  wake  of  a  victorious  Consul ; 
but  great  also  the  pleasures  of  freedom,  and  of  selecting 
your  own  time  and  topic  of  interest.  Across  the  grain 
of  the  peninsula  I  struck  off  to  the  monastery  of  the 
Zographou,  or  "of  the  Painter,"  so  called  from  a  sacred 
picture  of  St.  George  painted  by  an  invisible  hand.^  It  is 
situated  inland,  and  is  almost  entirely  Bulgarian.  Its  chief 
interest  was  its  Abbot,  Anthoinus. 

'  As  Melchizedek  represented  the  most  offensive  and 
worldly  aspect  of  the  Mountain,  so  Anthoinus  represented 
its  most  spiritual  side.  He  evidently  commanded  great 
respect,  both  within  and  without  the  walls  of  his  monastery, 
and  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  his  devotion.  He  came  to 
dine  with  me.  The  party  consisted  of  Anthoinus,  his 
second  in  office,  Hilarion,  a  travelling  monk,  myself,  and 
Georgio  as  interpreter.  Considering  the  extreme  difficulty 
of  making  the  subjects  intelligible,  the  conversation  was 
very  brisk.  I  will  give  you  one  specimen.  A.  P.  S.  : 
"  What  is  the  latest  miracle  that  has  taken  place  on  the 
Holy  Mountain  "  Anthoinus  (we  were  now  sitting  at 
dessert) :  "  Every  divnne  blessing  is  a  miracle ;  these  grapes 
are  a  miracle  ;  this  water-melon  is  a  miracle.  All  miracles 
are  but  the  working  of  Divine  Providence."  ' 

Stanley  thus  sums  up  '  the  most  curious  impressions ' 
which  he  carried  away  from  Mount  Athos  : 

'  As  to  the  monks  themselves,  you  will  have  partly 
gathered  from  my  account  the  general  idea  which  they 

^  Mr.  Riley's  version  of  the  story  is,  that  the  three  founders  quarrelled  over 
the  name  of  this  monastery.  It  was  finally  agreed  to  prepare  a  panel  of  wood, 
place  it  in  the  church,  and  pray  that  the  image  of  the  saint  to  whom  the 
monastery  should  be  dedicated  might  be  imprinted  on  it.  When  the  church 
was  re-entered,  the  image  of  St.  George  was  found  on  the  panel  {Atkos,  by 
Athelstan  Riley,  London,  1887,  pp.  353-4). 


CHAP.  XVII      IMFRESS/ONS  OF  MOUNT  ATHOS  S9 


leave.  In  some  respects  it  is  very  different  to  what  I  had 
conceived.  There  is  no  appearance  of  asceticism.  .  .  . 
They  have,  most  of  them,  the  manners  and  looks  of  kindly, 
friendly,  jovial  people,  who  are  full  of  little  jokes,  delighted 
to  see  strangers,  and  making  hospitality  one  of  the  first  of 
virtues.  Again,  there  is  very  little  restraint.  In  half  of 
the  monasteries  there  is  no  abbot  —  only  two  wardens, 
elected  by  the  community  —  and  in  these  every  monk  can 
make  as  large  a  fortune  as  he  pleases  on  his  own  account, 
which  he  can  dispose  of  as  he  wishes  during  his  lifetime 
(though  after  death  it  must  come  to  the  monastery). 
They  are  not  here  shut  up  within  the  convent,  nor  even 
within  the  peninsula.  In  fact,  large  numbers  are  non- 
residents, like  the  Oxford  Professors,  and  those  who  live  in 
the  mountains  are  constantly  going  to  and  fro.  Therefore, 
although  the  fantastic  rule  about  the  exclusion  of  females 
of  all  kinds  is  preserved  in  the  Mountain,  it  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  the  monks  have  never  seen  a  woman.  They 
have  as  much  opportunity  as  any  other  people,  whenever 
they  cross  over  to  any  of  their  farms  on  the  next  peninsula, 
or  to  their  town  houses  at  Salonica.  Their  occupations, 
too,  are  almost  entirely  secular.  The  vast  majority  are 
laymen.  They  are,  in  fact,  a  great  lay  corporation  with  a 
few  clerical  chaplains.  The  larger  number  are  labourers, 
fishermen,  cooks,  carvers,  painters,  who  have  chosen  to 
unite  their  professions  with  their  attendance  on  church 
services.  .  .  . 

'  The  world  has  not  been  shut  out  from  the  Holy 
Mountain,  and  there  is  no  pretence  on  their  part  to  any 
elevation  above  it.  The  one  motive  and  advantage  which 
they  profess,  and  which  they  evidently  feel,  is  that  there  is 
"quiet"  in  the  Mountain  —  and,  in  spite  of  their  occasional 
disputes  and  troubles,  t/ia^  they  unquestionably  have,  as 
contrasted  with  the  incessant  clatter  and  publicity  of  an 
Eastern  town,  and  the  incessant  uncertainties  and  vexa- 
tions of  the  Turkish  Government,  from  which  their  inde- 
pendent position  sets  them  free.  In  this  respect  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  Mountain  has  been  a  useful  institution,  a 
refuge  from  the  troubles  of  the  shipwreck  of  the  Byzantine, 
or  tyranny  of  the  Turkish,  Empire.  .  .  . 

'How  far  the  monks  are  more  ignorant  than  their  neigh- 
bours I  cannot  say.  .  .  .  Perhaps  the  most  remarkable 
piece  of  ignorance  I  came  across,  because  it  was  in  their 


6o  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  i86i 


own  line  of  knowledge,  was  that  in  the  two  great  Bulga- 
rian monasteries  the  names  of  Cyril  and  Methodius,  the 
Apostles  of  Bulgaria,  were  quite  unknown.  There  was  one 
pleasing  feature  of  their  minds  :  in  talking  of  the  legends 
about  pictures,  although  they  evidently  received  with  un- 
hesitating belief  the  chief  stories  about  them,  there  was  no 
tendency  to  exaggerate,  or  to  catch  at,  miracles  merely  for 
their  own  sake.  They  were  very  willing  to  say  that  this 
or  that  rested  on  tradition,  that  the  Church  did  not  impose 
it,  that  it  was  a  lie,  &c.,  &c.  In  short,  there  was  that  sort 
of  frank  simplicity  and  openness  which,  a  hundred  years 
hence,  might  not  be  a  bad  soil  for  a  really  great  theology.' 

At  Athens  Stanley  rejoined  his  sister,  and  with  her 
revisited  some  of  the  chief  scenes  of  interest  in  Greece 
which  had  fascinated  him  twenty  years  before.^  Recent 
discoveries,  as  well  as  the  pleasure  of  testing  the  strength 
of  his  memory,  gave  freshness  even  to  scenes  which  he  had 
most  thoroughly  explored.  The  whole  of  this  part  of  the 
tour  '  was  quite  a  resurrection  of  buried  delights,'  reviving 
his  first  feelings  that,  'with  the  single  exception  of  Pales- 
tine, there  is  no  travelling  equal  to  that  of  Greece  for 
compactness,  variety,  romance,  and  beauty.' 

Stanley  returned  to  England  in  the  last  week  of 
October  1861.  On  December  14th  in  the  same  year  the 
Prince  Consort  died.  When  the  news  reached  Stanley 
he  was  at  Fulham,  conducting  an  examination  for  Holy 
Orders.    'How  great  the  calamity  is,'  he  writes  to  Pearson, 

'  may  be  measured  by  thinking  that  its  most  appalling  re- 
sults transcend  even  anything  which  the  passionate  burst 
of  public  grief  has  ventured  to  express,  or  even  knows  or 
thinks  of.  No  public  death  could  have  affected  me  so 
much. 

^  Stanley  and  his  sister  accompanied  Sir  Thomas  Wyse,  the  English 
Minister  at  Athens,  and  his  niece,  Miss  Wyse.  His  letters  relating  to  this 
part  of  the  tour  are  published  in  Impressions  of  Greece,  by  the  Right  Hon.  Sir 
Thomas  Wyse,  K.C.B.,  London,  1S71.  At  Arachova  a  Greek  ballad  on  the 
death  of  the  Bandit  Daveli  was  sung  to  the  party.  Stanley's  verse-translation 
was  printed  in  Eraser's  Magazine  for  January  1862. 


CHAP.  XVII         DEATH  OF  PRINCE  ALBERT 


6i 


'  I  do  not  suppose  that  I  should  ever  have  known  more 
of  him.  But  so  long  as  he  lived  I  felt  sure  that  there  was 
a  steady  support  to  all  that  was  most  excellent  in  the 
English  Church.  That  barrier  is  now  thrown  down,  and 
through  the  chasm,  God  protect  us  from  the  spirits  that 
will  rush  in  ! ' 

As  one  of  the  Chaplains  to  the  late  Prince,  Stanley 
was  present  in  St.  George's  Chapel,  on  Monday,  De- 
cember 23rd,  1861,  at  the  funeral  of  Prince  Albert.  'It 
was,'  he  writes,  'a  profoundly  mournful  and  impressive 
sight.  Indeed,  considering  the  magnitude  of  the  event 
and  of  the  persons  present,  all  agitated  by  the  same  emo- 
tion, I  do  not  think  that  I  have  ever  seen,  or  shall  ever 
see,  anything  so  affecting.' 

The  interest  that  Stanley  felt  in  the  death  of  the  Prince 
Consort  is  evidenced  by  a  manuscript  in  which  he  has 
collected  together  every  incident  connected  with  the  pro- 
gress of  the  fatal  illness.  His  account  is  gathered  from 
every  side  —  from  members  of  the  Royal  Family,  as  well  as 
from  those  who  were  in  attendance  on  the  Prince,  or  were 
attached  to  the  Royal  Household.  It  is  thrown  into  the 
form  of  a  daily  journal,  and  is  accompanied  by  a  plan  of 
the  rooms  which  the  Prince  occupied,  and  a  description  of 
the  pictures  on  the  walls  and  the  books  on  the  tables. 
Most  of  the  manuscript  is  too  private  for  publication.  But 
the  fact  that  such  an  account  should  have  been  written  is 
too  characteristic  of  Stanley  to  be  omitted. 

Scarcely  less  peculiar  to  him  is  the  mode  in  which  it 
is  prepared.  As,  on  the  one  side,  it  illustrates  his  insatiable 
curiosity,  and  the  power  with  which  any  striking  event 
seized  hold  upon  his  mind,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  it  exem- 
plifies his  anxiety  to  realise  a  scene  with  all  the  vividness 
that  the  complete  command  of  details,  of  local  colour,  and 
of  all  attendant  circumstances,  ean  lend  to  the  imagination. 
And  the  commencement  of  the  account  throws  light  on 


62 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1861 


yet  another  of  Stanley's  mental  peculiarities.  He  is  careful 
to  note  that  the  last  entry  in  the  Prince's  Diary  — '  Ought 
not  to  go,  but  must '  —  refers  to  the  morning  when  he  was 
present  at  the  review  of  the  Eton  Volunteers :  that  the 
last  object  in  which  he  interested  himself  at  Windsor 
Castle  was  the  lighting  of  the  Waterloo  Gallery ;  that  on 
his  last  visit  to  the  Library  he  expressed  his  pleasure  at 
the  accidental  but  instructive  coincidence  that  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  books,  beginning  with  the  Bible  and  ending 
with  Theology,  brought  theological  literature,  though  from 
a  totally  different  point  of  view,  back  into  immediate 
contact  with  the  Bible. 

In  the  Prince's  morning-room  hung  his  favourite  portrait 
of  the  Queen,  taken  soon  after  their  marriage.  On  the 
table  lay  books,  chiefly  of  a  business  character  —  directo- 
ries, army  lists,  navy  lists,  clergy  lists,  &c.  —  and  among 
them  a  small  French  book,  by  the  Abbe  Segur,  on  the 
Difficulties  of  Religion.  In  the  dressing-room  hung  por- 
traits of  the  Queen  and  of  the  Princess  Royal.  Among 
the  books  on  the  table  were  Erskine  May's  '  Constitutional 
History '  and  Professor  Max  Miiller's  presentation  copy 
of  his  '  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language.'  Beyond 
these  rooms  was  the  Red  Room,  and,  separated  by  a  nar- 
row passage,  a  large,  airy  room,  with  an  oriel  window 
looking  to  the  east.  In  this  room,  which  was  hung  with 
blue  and  was  called  the  King's  Room,  both  George  IV.  and 
William  IV.  had  died.  Between  these  rooms  the  Prince 
was  moved  every  day  for  light  and  air.  He  expressed  much 
pleasure  at  the  change.  '  Oh,  how  delightful  to  see  the 
sun !  Only,  how  I  wish  that  I  could  hear  the  little  birds 
singing,  as  I  used  to  do  at  Rosenau  ! '  (his  birthplace). 

It  was  not  till  Friday  that  the  Prince  Consort's  illness 
caused  any  general  anxiety.  The  morning  of  Saturday 
the  1 3th  broke  with  a  glorious  sunrise,  which  streamed  in 


CHAP.  XVII      PRINCE  OF  WALES  IN  THE  EAST 


63 


full  splendour  through  the  oriel  window  of  the  '  King's 
Room.'  Throughout  the  day  the  dying  man  was  at  times 
conscious,  and  at  half-past  five  in  the  afternoon  a  change 
in  his  condition  animated  with  a  faint  gleam  of  hope  the 
watchers  by  his  bedside.    But  he  never  rallied. 

The  death  of  the  Prince  Consort  brought  with  it  impor- 
tant consequences  for  Stanley.  A  request  was  rqade  to 
him  which,  under  the  circumstances,  he  could  not  refuse. 
In  January  1862  he  was  summoned  to  Osborne. 

'  Osborne  :  Jan.  13,  1862. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  —  It  was  the  wish  of  the  lamented 
Prince  Consort,  when  he  decided  on  the  Prince  of  Wales 
making  a  tour  in  the  Holy  Land,  to  have  had  the  benefit 
of  your  advice  and  knowledge  in  regard  to  the  details. 

'  Under  these  circumstances,  I  have  been  directed  by 
Her  Majesty  to  ask  whether  you  can  conveniently  come  to 
Osborne  for  a  few  days,  choosing  the  earliest  convenient 
day  after  to-morrow  for  that  purpose. 

*  Yours  truly, 

'R.  Bkuce.' 

Two  days  after  his  arrival  at  Osborne  he  had  a  private 
interview  with  General  Bruce. 

'  As  I  was  sitting  in  the  Equerry's  Room,'  he  writes  to 
his  mother, 

'reading  the  "Times,"  General  Bruce  came  in,  and  sate 
down.  He  seemed  uneasy,  as  if  wishing  to  say  some- 
thing, and  at  last  I  laid  down  the  paper.  He  then  turned 
to  me  and  said,  "  I  hardly  know  how  to  approach  what  I 
am  going  to  say  ;  but  is  it  totally  impossible  that  you  should 
go  with  us  "  I  was  silent.  He  went  on:  "The  Prince 
Consort  has  often  said,  'What  would  it  be  if  Professor 
Stanley  could  go  with  you  '  I  fear  it  is  impossible.  The 
Queen  has  said  the  same  thing  to  me  since  you  came,  and 
this  morning  the  Prince  of  Wales  has  said  the  same  thing 
from  himself.  They  do  not  urge  it,  they  do  not  intend  to 
request  it,  because  they  know  what  it  is  that  they  ask. 
But  if  you  could  go,  it  would  be  inestimable."  "Such  a 
thought  had  never  occurred  to  me  before  I  came  here,  and, 


64 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


to  speak  quite  openly,  I  doubt  whether  I  am  the  proper 
person.  It  is  neither  comphment  nor  blame  to  me  to  say 
one  thing  or  the  other.  I  should  not  be  a  suitable  com- 
panion for  him."  "I  assure  you,"  he  said,  "you  are  the 
only  person  that  I  can  think  of."  .  .  . 

'  I  said,  "  Have  you  considered  what  his  father  would  have 
thought  of  my  theological  connections }  I  have  endeavoured 
to  keep  impartial  in  the  midst  of  our  Church  parties  ;  the 
special'Object  of  my  going  might  distress  the  many  excellent 
persons  who  regard  me  with  terror  and  aversion.  It  is  of 
the  utmost  importance  that  the  Prince  should  grow  up,  not 
under  the  influence  of  any  special  theological  school.  Have 
you  thought  of  this "  "  I  can  only  tell  you,"  he  said, 
"  what  occurred  when  the  Prince  of  Wales  went  to  Oxford. 
It  was  mentioned  to  me,  and  I  mentioned  to  the  Prince, 
that  it  was  thought  objectionable  that  the  Prince  of  Wales 
should  be  there  without  some  religious  instruction.  The 
Prince  replied,  'I  cannot  endure  to  see  him  placed  under 
any  of  those  extreme  influences.  There  is  only  one  man 
in  Oxford  to  whom  I  could  intrust  him  for  this  —  that  is  Dr. 
Stanley.'  "  "  Well,"  I  said,  "  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  moved 
by  what  you  say.  But  there  are  two  great  objections.  One, 
the  extreme  inconvenience  of  leaving  my  occupations  and 
employments ;  the  other,  the  reluctance  I  have  to  leave 
my  mother  for  so  long  a  time  and  for  such  a  distance.  One 
mode  does  occur  to  me  —  that  I  should  join  you  at  Jerusalem, 
after  you  have  finished  Egypt.  You  will  have  then  gone 
through  a  part  of  your  journey  for  which  I  have  no  special 
qualifications  —  you  will  have  had  chaplains  on  the  way. 
Would  this  meet  the  case  1 "  "  I  accept  anything  which  you 
offer."  I  said,  "You  know  that  I  do  not  use  many  words 
on  these  occasions.  But  you  will  let  me  express  that, 
whatever  is  my  final  decision,  I  cannot  but  have  been 
most  deeply  gratified  by  the  manner  in  which  the  pro- 
posal has  been  made."  I  had  walked  with  the  Prince  of 
W.  and  Prince  Louis  just  before  in  the  most  entire  un- 
consciousness. ...  I  feel  now  as  if  it  must  be,  but  two  or 
three  things  I  shall  urge  further  to-morrow.  .  .  .' 

Stanley  regarded  the  proposal  which  had  been  made 
him  'with  vast  reluctance  and  misgivings.'  'But  I  feel,' 
he  says  to  Hugh  Pearson,  '  that  I  could  not  refuse  such  a 
contribution  to  a  household  plunged  in  such  grief  as  this.' 


CHAP.  XVII  STANLEY  INVITED  TO  GO 


65 


His  friends  agreed  in  urging  him  to  accept  the  task.  '  I 
hope,'  wrote  Professor  Jowett  to  Mrs.  Stanley, 

'that  you  will  let  him  go.  There  is  no  one  equally  fit,  no 
one  who  could  amuse  and  influence  the  Prince  in  the  same 
way.  I  know  his  old  dislike  to  going  to  the  same  places 
twice  over,  Jaut  I  think  they  would  derive  a  new  interest 
from  being  seen  in  such  company.  .  .  .  Arthur  has  sim- 
plicity, and  nature,  and  endless  stores  of  amusing  conver- 
sation. I  feel  convinced  that  the  Prince  would  take  to  him, 
and  like  him.  .  .  .  For  Arthur  himself,  I  think  the 
break  in  the  monotony  of  life  would  be  a  great  advantage. 
He  seems  to  me  to  have  been  somewhat  overstrained  during 
the  last  few  years,  and  I  believe  the  rest  of  six  months  and 
the  refreshment  of  the  memories  of  Palestine  would  give 
him  a  new  spring  of  life.' 

'The  Queen,'  wrote  Dr.  Tait,  'could  not  have  chosen 
better  for  her  son.'  '  I  rejoice,'  said  F.  D.  Maurice,  '  for  the 
country's  sake,  in  your  new  work.'  '  I  doubt  not,'  writes 
Dr.  Vaughan,  '  that,  when  your  life  is  seen  as  a  whole,  this 
chapter  in  it  will  not  be  one  of  its  least  useful  and  least 
eventful.'  Reluctant  to  leave  his  mother,  whose  health  was 
delicate,  Stanley  hesitated.  But  when  Mrs.  Stanley  herself 
urged  upon  him  the  duty  of  accepting  a  responsibility 
which  afforded  him  the  opportunity  of  rendering  a  service 
to  the  Royal  family  in  their  present  trouble,  he  no  longer 
wavered,  but  determined  to  accompany  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
At  first  he  stipulated  that  he  should  join  the  party  in 
Palestine.  It  was,  however,  finally  arranged  that  he  should 
meet  the  Prince  at  Alexandria,  ascend  the  Nile  with  him, 
and  accompany  him,  not  only  through  the  Holy  Land,  but 
on  the  Egyptian  portion  of  the  expedition. 

'I  am  now  perfectly  satisfied,'  he  writes  to  Pearson  at 
the  end  of  January,  1862  '  (and  so  is  the  dear  mother),  that 
it  was  necessary  to  go.  It  may  end  in  smoke,  or  even  in 
gall  and  wormwood  ;  but  it  may  also  be  full  of  interest, 
and  may  be  productive  of  some  good.' 

VOL.  II  F 


66 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

February  to  June,  1862 

SECOND  TOUR  IN  THE  EAST  — SUNDAY  AT  CAIRO  WITH  THE 
PRINCE  OF  WALES  — THE  NILE  — I-CARNAK  — DENDERA  — 
DEATH  OF  MRS.  STANLEY  —  ENTRY  INTO  JERUSALEM  — 
BETHANY— THE  MOSQUE  OF  HEBRON  — THE  SAMARITAN 
PASSOVER  — THE  SHORES  OF  LAKE  TIBERIAS  — TENT-LIFE 
IN  PALESTINE  — THE  CEDARS  OF  LEBANON 

On  February  12th,  1862,  Stanley  left  England  for  Alex- 
andria. '  I  am  quite  well,'  he  writes  to  his  mother  from 
Paris,  '  with  no  backward  looks,  and  I  never  went  abroad 
with  so  strong  a  feeling  of  its  necessity.' 

By  his  mother's  advice  he  took  with  him  his  faithful  ser- 
vant, Waters,  whose  talent  for  bird-stuffing  made  him  a  valu- 
able addition  to  the  party.  On  board  the  steamer  between 
Marseilles  and  Malta,  besides  reading  'Hypatia,'  which  was 
'too  highly  coloured  '  for  his  taste,  and  re-reading  'Tancred,' 
and  writing  '  more  than  half  the  preface '  to  his  lectures,  he 
found  time  to  send  home  a  long  letter  filled  with  minute 
sketches  of' his  fellow-passengers  and  their  sayings  and  do- 
ings, and  concluding  with,  '  Waters  and  I  as  well  as  ever.' 
At  Malta,  anxious  that  his  serv^ant  should  see,  and  be 
interested  in,  everything,  he  took  him  over  the  Church  of 
St.  John  and  the  Governor's  Palace.  Sunday,  February 
22nd,  1862,  was  spent  on  board  the  steamer  between  Malta 
and  Alexandria. 

'  Waters  is  in  full  communication  with  the  dragoman, 
and  continues  to  enjoy  himself  much.  I  found  him 
to-day  (Sunday)  by  himself,  leaning  over  the  sea,  read- 


CHAP.  XVIII    TOUR  WITH  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES  67 


ing  his  Prayer-book.  I  began  to  talk  about  its  being  the 
time  when  they  were  going  to  church  at  Oxford,  and  he 
took  out  of  his  pocket  a  coloured  photograph  of  the  three 
little  girls,  dressed  in  their  Sunday  best,  which,  apparently, 
he  carried  about  with  him  everywhere.  He  said  that  he 
could  not  get  out  of  his  mind  the  beauty  of  the  Church  of 
Malta  :  lie  had  quite  longed  to  clean  the  silver  rails.  .  .  .' 

Alexandria  was  reached  on  the  24th  of  February.  There 
he  received  '  a  death  blow  to  the  only  vision  of  real  pleasure ' 
on  which  he  had  counted.  His  old  dragoman,  Mohamed, 
was  unable  to  accompany  the  expedition.  Four  days  later 
the  Prince  of  Wales  arrived  from  Trieste  in  the  Osdorne, 
was  joined  by  Stanley,  and  at  once  proceeded  to  Cairo. 

The  journey  had  now  begun.  The  party  consisted  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  General  Bruce,  Major  Teesdale, 
Captain  Keppel,  the  Hon.  R.  Meade,  Consul-General 
Colquhoun,  Dr.  Minter,  Captain  Power  of  the  Osborne, 
and  Stanley.  The  tour  was  undertaken  under  conditions 
totally  different  to  any  of  his  former  or  later  expeditions. 
He  was  no  longer  with  companions  of  his  own  choice, 
and  of  tastes  and  training  like  his  own.  Few  young 
men  of  twenty  would  have  fully  appreciated  Stanley's  in- 
satiable appetite  for  every  detail  of  historical  or  sacred 
associations  —  an  appetite  so  absorbing  as  to  leave  little 
room  for  sympathy  with  their  very  different  interests. 
But,  on  the  whole,  the  result  was,  to  say  the  least,  as 
favourable  as  could  reasonably  have  been  expected.  Every 
one  of  the  party  felt  the  charm  of  his  companionship.  'The 
Prince,'  writes  General  Bruce  to  his  sister.  Lady  Augusta 
Bruce,  on  March  3rd,  1862,  'takes  great  delight  in  the  new 
world  on  which  he  has  entered,  and  we  have  made  an 
immense  acquisition  in  Mr.  Stanley,  who  communicates  to 
others  the  intelligent  interest  which  he  finds  himself  in  all 
that  relates  to  the  past  as  well  as  to  the  present.' 

Sunday,  March  2nd,  was   spent  at  Cairo.    A  state 


68 


LIFE  OF  DEAN'  STANLEY 


1862 


visit  from  the  Viceroy  prevented  the  Prince  attending  the 
morning  service ;  but  Stanley  assisted  the  Chaplain  in  the 
administration  of  the  Sacrament.  '  It  carried  my  thoughts 
away  from  the  present,  and  gave  me  better  heart  for  the 
future.' 

*  After  luncheon  there  was  a  ride  through  the  streets 
on  donkeys,  much  to  the  horror  of  the  old  Turkish  Pasha, 
the  Chamberlain,  who  thought  it  not  at  all  cojivcnable,  and 
adduced  to  the  contrary  the  example  of  the  Comte  de 
Chambord.  But  in  vain.  H.  R.  H.  rode  on  a  donkey 
called  "Captain  Snooks";  ...  I  had  "Tom  Sayers "  ; 
someone  else,  "Bill  Thomson."  We  rode  round  the  streets. 
.  .  .  Of  course  the  novelty  was  gone  ;  but  the  rush  of 
Oriental  imagery  seemed  to  me  as  remarkable  as  ever. 

'  At  the  termination  of  the  Turkish  quarter  we  were  met 
by  five  beautiful  open  carriages,  in  which  we  were  (in  order 
to  save  the  ignominy  of  arriving  on  donkeys)  to  reach  the 
English  church.  But  no  carriages  could  penetrate  the 
intricate  and  narrow  lanes  of  the  Coptic  quarter,  and  so 
we  defiled  on  foot  through  these  filthy  passages.  ...  It 
was  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  Prince's  quickness  of  memory 
and  kindness  of  attention  that  in  church  he  recognised 
Crichton  (of  whose  arrival  in  Egypt  he  had  not  heard  a 
word)  as  having  once  played  at  tennis  with  him  at  Oxford. 
He,  immediately  on  coming  out,  said  to  me,  "  Was  not  that 
Crichton  "  stopped  for  him,  begged  me  to  call  him,  and 
spoke  to  him  for  some  minutes.  That  is  certainly  a  most 
useful  and  king-like  quality.' 

The  Pyramids  were  visited  at  early  dawn  on  the  morning 
of  March  6th. 

'  General  Bruce  and  I  slept  in  the  same  tent.  At  break 
of  day  Keppel  opened  the  tent  curtain,  and  announced 
that  the  Prince  was  already  off  for  the  Pyramids.  We  got 
up  and  rushed  off  as  fast  as  we  could. 

'  We  all  reached  the  base  of  the  Great  Pyramid  from 
different  directions,  and  in  the  dim  twilight  I  stumbled 
over  someone  as  I  was  setting  foot  on  the  first  step.  It 
was  the  Prince.  We  were  so  early  that  the  Arabs  had  not 
collected,  and  instead,  therefore,  of  the  superfluous  help 


CHAP.  XVIII 


THE  PYRAMIDS 


69 


that  most  travellers  find,  there  were  not  enough  even  to 
furnish  one  apiece.  I  had  secured  one  little  Bedouin 
boy,  whom  I  offered  to  the  Prince,  but  he  resolutely  refused 
and  began  the  ascent  himself.  I  became  somewhat  uneasy, 
for  the  stones,  though  manageable  enough  with  the  assist- 
ance of  the  Arabs,  were  so  smooth  in  certain  places  that  a 
single  false  step  would  have  tumbled  H.  R.  H.  down  to  the 
bottom.  My  boy  kept  asking,  "  Where  is  the  Governor  .'' 
What !  that  little  chap  !  ivhy  he  go  up  alone  f  At  last  I 
insisted  on  the  boy  going  alongside  of  the  Prince,  and, 
though  he  still  went  on  without  help,  the  Arab  could  have 
given  him  a  helping  hand  in  case  of  need.  And  so  we  all 
came  to  the  top.  .  .  .  The  sun  had  just  risen,  and  the 
view,  but  for  the  mist  on  Cairo,  was  glorious,  although,  no 
doubt,  far  inferior  to  the  view  at  sunset.  We  sate  there 
for  about  half  an  hour  and  then  came  down.' 

When  the  voyage  was  resumed,  'there  is,'  writes 
Stanley, 

'unlimited  room  for  reading  between  these  well-known 
and  monotonous  banks.  The  Prince  set  his  mind  on  my 
reading  "  Ea.st  Lynne,"  which  I  did  at  three  sittings. 
Yesterday  I  stood  a  tolerable  examination  in  it.  A  brisk 
cross-examination  took  place  between  H.  R.  H.,  A.  P.  S., 
Meade,  and  Keppel.  I  came  off  with  flying  colours,  and 
put  a  question  which  no  one  could  answer  :  "  With  whom 
did  Lady  Isabel  dine  on  the  fatal  night "  It  is  impossi- 
ble not  to  like  him  (the  Prince),  and  to  be  constantly  with 
him  brings  out  his  astonishing  memory  of  names  and 
persons.' 

Another  letter,  written  on  the  Nile  on  Sunday,  March 
9th,  expresses  Stanley's  pleasure  in  the  voyage  : 

'  I  cannot  refrain  from  writing  to  you,  though  I  have 
hardly  anything  to  say.  But  I  feel  so  increasingly  satisfied 
that  you  must  have  this  expression  of  my  pleasure.  The 
mere  enjoyment  of  a  perfectly  good-humoured  and  happy 
party  sailing,  without  the  slightest  discomfort,  up  the  most 
wonderful  of  rivers,  is  in  itself  not  to  be  despised,  and  I 
am  more  and  more  struck  by  the  amiable  and  endearing 
qualities  of  the  Prince.  ...  H.  R.  H.  had  himself  laid 
down  a  rule  that  there  was  to  be  no  shooting  to-day,  and, 


70 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


though  he  was  sorely  tempted  as  we  passed  flocks  of  cranes 
and  geese  seated  on  the  bank  in  the  most  inviting  crowds, 
he  rigidly  conformed  to  it.  A  crocodile  was  allowed  to  be 
a  legitimate  exception,  but  none  appeared.  He  sate  alone 
on  the  deck  with  me,  talking  in  the  frankest  manner  for  an 
hour  in  the  afternoon,  and  made  the  most  reasonable  and 
proper  remarks  on  the  due  observance  of  Sunday  in  Eng- 
land. We  are  now  sitting  in  his  cabin  —  he  writing  his 
Journal,  I  writing  this.  In  short,  I  am  very  happy,  and 
shall  be  so  to  the  end,  if  all  goes  as  well.  We  shall 
probably  be  on  land  again  on  the  25th,  and,  I  think,  see  all 
that  we  need  see.' 

At  Thebes  Stanley  received  the  news  that  his  mother 
had  been  seriously  ill.  Shortly  after  his  departure  from 
England  Mrs.  Stanley,  whose  health  had  for  some  time 
been  failing,  grew  so  alarmingly  worse  that  she  was  scarcely 
expected  to  recover.  As  soon  as  the  news  of  her  illness 
reached  the  Queen,  Her  Majesty  wished  that  Stanley 
should  be  at  once  recalled.  '  The  poor  Queen,'  writes  Lady 
Augusta  Bruce  to  Miss  Stanley  on  February  27th,  1862, 

'  exclaimed  when  she  heard  of  it,  "  Oh !  that  was  Mr. 
Stanley's  only  hesitation,  only  doubt  about  going  —  the 
unwillingness  to  leave  his  mother,"  and  she  would  have 
wished  to  recall  him  at  once  —  to  do  anything  rather  than 
allow  such  a  sacrifice  to  be  made.  It  was  only  when  Mrs. 
Stanley's  own  wishes  were  made  clear  that  the  Queen, 
deeply  touched  and  affected,  desired  me  to  express  all  she 
felt  for  you,  for  her,  for  Mr.  Stanley,  and  to  say  that  noth- 
ing should  be  done  but  what  Mrs.  Stanley  decided.' 

When,  on  March  i6th,  the  news  of  his  mother's  illness 
reached  Stanley,  the  danger  seemed  to  have  passed  : 

'  At  midnight  last  night  a  welcome  packet  was  tost 
into  my  bed,  which  contamed  your  dear  letters  of  the  25th. 
My  dearest  mother,  my  dearest  sisters,  you  may  imagine 
what  a  turn  it  gave  me  to  think  of  what  might  have  been 
in  store  for  me.  Oh  no !  I  will  not  come  back  until  you 
send  for  me.  Only  remember  that,  when  Syria  is  over, 
I  shall  consider  my  task  to  be  accomplished,  and  that,  if 


CHAP.  XVIII 


KARNAK 


71 


there  should  be  the  least  cause  for  recalling  me  from 
Beyrout,  there  will  be  no  adequate  reason  zvhy  I  should 
stay.  .  .  .' 

In  the  same  letter  he  goes  on  to  describe  the  Sunday 
which  he  had  just  spent  at  Karnak: 

'  .  .  .  Karnak,  which  I  chose  for  our  first  day,  has 
thoroughly  answered.  .  .  .  The  Prince  had  already  sug- 
gested what  had  already  occurred  to  me  and  was  arranged 
with  General  Bruce,  that  our  service  at  Thebes  should  be  in 
some  tomb  or  temple.  Accordingly,  I  chose  to-day  a  corner 
in  the  Great  Hall  of  Karnak,  read  the  Psalms  of  the  day 
(March  16),  and  preached  ^  on  the  two  verses  about  Egypt 
which  they  contain.  It  was,  I  must  say,  a  striking  scene. 
In  the  furthest  aisles  of  that  vast  Cathedral  were  herded 
together  the  horses,  dromedaries,  asses,  and  their  attend- 
ants. In  the  shade  of  two  of  the  gigantic  pillars,  seated 
on  a  mass  of  broken  stones,  were  ourselves,  two  or  three 
stray  travellers,  and  the  servants  in  the  background.  The 
Prince  expressed  great  pleasure  at  the  sermon,  and  begged 
to  have  a  copy  of  it.  It  was  on  the  good  and  evil  of  the 
old  Egyptian  religion.  .  .  .  Farewell  my  dearest,  most 
precious  mother.    God  keep  and  preserve  you  ! ' 

On  the  return  voyage  Dendera  was  visited.  The  ex- 
pedition had  been  delayed  by  a  crocodile-hunt.  But  no 
crocodiles  had  appeared,  and  the  disappointed  sportsmen 
were  obliged  to  be  content  with  a  flock  of  pelicans. 

'  By  this  time  the  sun  was  beginning  rapidly  to  sink,  and 
we  arrived  at  the  point  where  the  choice  lay  between 
pursuing  the  last  faint  chance  of  the  crocodiles  or  catch- 
ing the  last  daylight  for  the  Temple.  .  .  .  Satisfied 
with  the  pelicans,  we  all  rushed  to  shore,  sprang  on  the 
horses  and  donkeys,  and  galloped  off  over  the  dusty  plain 
towards  the  Temple.  .  .  .  The  whole  plain  was  covered 
by  the  broken  stragglers  of  the  party ;  the  donkeys, 
which  at  first  kept  pace  with  the  horses  —  amongst  them 

1  Sermon  II.  of  the  Sermons  in  the  East :  'Israel  in  Egypt' — 'Thou  hast 
brought  a  vine  out  of  Egypt'  (Ps.  Ixxx.  8);  '  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which 
brought  thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt '  (Ps.  Ixxxi.  lo). 


72 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


mine  —  flagged  ;  a  troop  of  wild  Arabs  added  to  the  con- 
fusion by  flying  to  and  fro,  and  distracting  us  from  the 
right  road.  The  foremost  horseman  reached  the  portico 
just  as  the  sun  rested  upon  it.  .  .  .  So  i-apid  and  abrupt 
was  the  sunset  that  before  I  had  entered  the  Temple  it  was 
dark.  Happily  there  were  half  a  dozen  candles  amongst 
us,  which  just  served  to  light  up  the  vast  gloomy  halls  and 
gigantic  pillars,  and  to  welcome,  one  after  another,  the 
riders  as  they  dropped  in.  .  .  .  I  had  announced  at 
breakfast  that  Cleopatra  was  a  remarkable  likeness  of  a 
distinguished  person  whom  they  all  knew.  .  .  .  Therefore, 
in  spite  of  the  darkness  and  dust,  H.  R.  H.  and  the  others 
consented  to  be  led  all  round  the  precincts  of  the  Temple 
till  we  reached  the  wall  where  I  remembered  the  sculptures 
were.  .  .  .  The  mounds  of  dust  were  so  high  that  by  lift- 
ing up  our  candles  to  the  wall  the  light  fell  exactly  on  the 
colossal  face.  The  likeness  is  becoming  very  faint,  but 
Teesdale  guessed  it.  .  .  .  Would  the  Bishop  of  Oxford 
have  been  gratified,  or  not,  to  have  seen  us  all  standing 
before  the  gigantic  Queen,  and  speculating  on  the  resem- 
blance of  her  features  to  his  ' 

On  March  23rd  the  party  returned  to  Cairo.  There 
the  news  was  broken  to  Stanley  that  his  mother  was  dead. 
She  had  died  on  the  morning  of  Ash  Wednesday,  March 
7th.  '  I  must,'  he  writes  to  his  sisters,  'have  been  un- 
consciously watching  with  you,  for  I  was  awake  most  of 
the  night,  and  then  fell  asleep,  to  be  roused  at  dawn  —  and 
then  all  was  over.'  The  packet  which  had  reached  him  at 
Thebes  contained  the  last  letter  that  he  ever  received  from 
his  mother,  'the  last,  I  suppose,  that  she  wrote  —  quite 
herself,  but  in  a  sadly  shaken  handwriting.  .  .  .' 

The  shock  was  overwhelming.  In  a  long  letter  of 
twenty  pages,  written  from  Cairo,  he  pours  out  his  whole 
soul  to  his  sisters  : 

'  It  was  between  4  and  5  yesterday  that  we  reached 
this.  Mr.  Calvert,  the  Consul,  came  on  board.  I  had  an  in- 
describable misgiving  from  his  manner.  .  .  .  The  carriages 
came  round,  and  I  was,  as  usual,  going  in  the  second 


CHAP.  XVIII         DEATH  OF  MRS.  STANLEY 


73 


carriage.  General  Bruce  asked  me  to  go  in  the  first,  with 
the  Prince,  Teesdale,  and  himself.  It  was  a  long  drive. 
The  General  looked  very  sad.  .  .  .  We  arrived  at  the  Pal- 
ace here,  and  entered  the  large  hall.  General  Bruce  at  last 
said,  "  Will  you  come  into  this  room  .'' "  .  .  .  The  moment 
we  were  alone  he  said,  "  Mr.  Calvert  has,  I  am  afraid, 
received  some  bad  news.  Your  mother  has  been  very  ill." 
I  interrupted  him  at  once,  and  said,  "She  is  dead !" 

'  My  dearest  children,  I  have  written  this  because  I 
know  you  will  wish  to  know  every  detail.  But  how  can  I 
write  ."^  Long  as  I  have  expected  this — year  by  year, 
almost  day  by  day  —  I  do  not  know,  I  do  not  understand, 
what  has  happened.  I  cannot  know  now,  nor  for  months 
to  come.    It  is  the  one  great  blow. 

'  .  .  .  Calvert  had  brought  down  "The  Times,"  and  told 
the  General  instantly  on  coming  on  board.  Nothing  could 
have  been  more  considerate  than  the  conduct  of  everyone, 
from  H.  R.  H.  downwards.  ...  I  begged  to  see  Meade. 
He,  I  knew,  would  feel  for  me  —  from  what  I  had  heard  of 
his  own  mother's  death.  He  did  indeed,  God  bless  him  ! 
No  younger  brother  could  have  been  more  tender,  more 
considerate,  than  he  was.  .  .  . 

'  At  last  I  ventured  to  read  your  two  most  consoling 
letters.  Yes,  I  fully  admit  all  that  you  say.  I  could  not 
have  returned  in  time.  I  could  not  have  had  any  further 
parting  words  than  we  have  had  a  hundred  times.  Again 
and  again,  in  those  long  evenings,  have  we  talked  over  this 
event,  and  the  future  life,  and  its  mysteries,  and  the  ways 
of  Providence,  and  her  wishes,  and  her  hopes,  and  her  faith, 
and  what  she  should  say  if  she  were  dying.  It  would  not 
be  worthy  of  her  to  add  to  this  great  sorrow  one  grain  of 
imaginary  grievance  or  self-reproach  at  my  absence.  .  .  . 

'  By  degrees  I  read  all  the  letters.  ...  I  shall  answer 
the  Bishop  of  London,  and  Acland,  and  Jowett,  and  H.  P. 
Dear  H.  P.  !  It  is  indeed  a  consolation  to  me  that  he  was 
there,  and  to  read  the  service  ;  and  it  will  have  been  a  con- 
solation to  him.  ...  I  sent  for  Meade  again  later  in  the 
evening,  and  begged  him  to  fulfil  Jowett's  request  by  read- 
ing to  me  aloud  the  14th,  15th,  and  i6th  chapters  of  St. 
John.    They  took  me  to  another  world.  .  .  . 

'Tell  Leycester  Penrhyn  with  what  entire  relief  I  am 
able  to  say  to  those  who  ask  (the  Prince  especially  asked) 
whether  there  was  any  business  to  be  done,  that  there  is 


74 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


one  who  will  do  everything.  ..."  Gather  up  the  frag- 
ments that  remain."  This,  you  say,  is  what  we  must  do. 
Yes ;  and  on  that  text,  as  it  occurs  in  the  Gospel  of  next 
Sunday,  I  had  intended  to  preach,  and  shall  preach,  on  my 
first  Sunday  in  Palestine.  .  .  . 

'There  is  one  painful  part  in  this  absence  —  the  deaden- 
ing effect  of  distance.  "  Merciful ! "  you  will  say.  Yes,  but 
I  feel  that  the  event  which  is  so  absorbing  in  itself  is  broken 
by  the  pause  of  this  immense  interval.  God's  will  be  done ! 
It  is  altogether  a  terrible  crisis.  How  I  shall  struggle 
through  all  the  parts  of  it,  or  what  I  shall  be  when  it  is 
over,  who  can  say  Something  altogether  different  seems 
before  me.  May  it  be  what  she  would  have  wished  !  I  try 
to  think  that  our  communion  with  her  is  unbroken.  But 
that  can  only  be  through  some  higher  communion,  in  which 
she  and  we  may  alike  partake.  May  we  have  grace  to 
share  in  that,  whenever  and  whatever  it  be. 

'March  26.  —  The  letters  do  not  go  till  noon,  so  that  I 
can  add  a  few  last  words.  You  can  understand  how  each 
day  seems  to  bring  with  it  a  new  stage  of  this  new  life. 
But  you  may  comfort  yourselves  with  the  thought  that  I 
now  feel  much  better  able  to  look  forward  to  what  lies 
before  me,  and  to  see  how  it  will  be  done. 

'  Every  morning  I  wake  with  the  tearful  recollection  of 
that  sweet  face  and  dear  voice.  But  there  is  no  bitterness 
in  the  waking.  .  .  .  It  is  only  a  confusion  —  that  I  shall  see 
her  again,  and  then  the  reflection  that  this  cannot  be.  .  .  . 
And  then,  one  after  another,  the  kind  fellow-travellers  drop 
in,  and  ask  how  I  am,  and  make  some  cheerful,  half-playful 
remark,  to  which  I  feel  that  I  can  now  quite  respond.  I 
have  told  them  all  that  I  do  not  wish  to  cast  any  shadow  over 
them.,  and  I  do  not  think  I  need. 

'  For  myself,  I  feel  that  the  effect  will  be  —  at  least  it 
ought  to  be  —  to  make  me  devote  myself  more  wholly  to 
the  work  before  me,  not  dwelling  on  any  little  drawbacks 
or  annoyances,  but  thinking  only  of  the  great  possible  good. 
Perhaps  up  to  this  time  I  have  hardly  done  this  enough. 
I  will,  with  God's  help,  repair  this  for  the  future,  and  I 
trust  that,  in  the  light  of  this  great  visitation,  I  shall  not 
indulge  in  any  murmurs.  I  feel  more  and  more  convinced 
that  not  only  am  I  acting  in  conformity  with  her  wishes, 
but  that  I  should  have  done  wrong  in  the  sight  of  God  and 
man  in  withdrawing  from  my  post.' 


CHAP.  XVIII        DEATH  OF  MRS.  STANLEY 


75 


Among  the  many  letters  of  condolence  which  Stanley 
received  was  one  from  Professor  Jowett.  His  answer  was 
written  from  Cairo  on  March  25th,  1862  : 

'  I  knew  when  I  saw  that  pile  of  letters,  which,  for  some 
time  after  hearing  the  dreadful  news  I  did  not  venture  to 
open,  that  I  should  find  one  from  you,  and  that  it  would 
be  a  comfort  to  me.  For  years  I  have  looked  forward  to 
this  inevitable  day,  and  wondered  how  I  could  bear  it. 
It  has  come  under  circumstances  which,  in  some  respects, 
greatly  aggravate  the  trial.  Making  all  allowance  for  the 
softening  effects  of  distance  and  necessary  duty,  and  also, 
I  must  gratefully  add,  for  the  tender  care  and  sympathy  of 
the  comparative  strangers  amongst  whom  I  have  to  pursue 
my  lonely  course,  it  is  a  cruel  pang  not  to  have  been  there 
at  the  moment,  not  to  be  there  now,  to  enter  into  the  full 
tide  of  grief  of  all  those  who  knew  and  loved  and  revered 
her.  .  .  .    God's  will  be  done. 

'  I  have  talked  with  her  again  and  again  of  this  great 
event  —  of  what  she  herself  would  think  and  feel  and  say, 
and  of  what  she  would  wish  for  me.  I  remember  well, 
when  we  were  told  of  the  overwhelming  darkness  which 
had  fallen  upon  Buckle  when  he  lost  his  mother,  to  whom, 
as  I  to  mine,  he  owed  everything,  she  said,  "  It  is  a  great 
consolation  to  me  to  think  that  it  will  not  be  so  with  you 
when  I  am  gone.  You  will  not  think  that  your  interest  in 
life  is  over ;  you  will  remember  that,  by  carrying  on  your 
work,  you  will  be  carrying  on  my  wishes,  my  interests,  my 
affection."    So  may  it  be. 

'  You  truly  say  that  this  is  a  call  to  a  higher  world.  I 
obeyed  your  suggestion  as  well  as  I  could.  I  could  not 
read  those  chapters  for  myself.  But  I  had  them  read  to 
me  by  the  one  of  our  party  who  had  most  keenly  felt  the 
same  sorrow,  Meade  (of  the  Foreign  Office),  who  has  been 
to  me  as  a  younger  brother  in  kindness  and  in  sympathy. 
How  wide  is  the  scope  of  those  words  !  How  distantly,  as 
on  distant  mountains,  do  they  reflect  the  feelings  of  human 
sorrow  ! 

'I  have  determined  to  go  on.  For  a  moment  —  for  an 
hour  —  I  wavered.  But  the  unanimous  opinion  of  all  my 
friends  and  relations,  as  I  opened  letter  after  letter,  proved 
to  me  the  disappointment  and  grief  which  my  return  would 
cause  to  them  in  England,  and  reflection  showed  me  that, 


76 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


whilst  this  heavy  blow  has  struck  off  half  my  powers  and 
opportunities,  it  has  given  me  others.  The  Prince  himself 
was  to  me  as  he  had  never  been  before.  The  others  were 
as  if  they  were  of  the  same  family.  From  one  came  forth 
a  voice  which,  but  for  this,  I  should  probably  never  have 
heard  at  all. 

'The  Holy  Land  will  become  to  me  doubly  holy  when 
thus  revisited.  You  ask  to  speak  of  her  to  me  when  I 
return.  I  should  have  entreated  you  to  do  so.  It  is  the 
chief  pain  of  my  present  situation  that,  from  ignorance  of 
her,  there  is  no  one  here  who  can.  She  loved  you,  she 
knew  you,  she  regarded  your  interests  as  hers  and  as  mine. 
To  her  constant  courageous  support  you  owe  whatever  poor 
services  I  may  have  been  able  to  render  you.  She  was 
indeed  a  tower  of  strength  to  many  who  knew  it  not.  It 
was  a  wonder  to  me  that  she  was  not  more  highly  valued 
even  than  she  was.  It  is  a  melancholy  satisfaction  to  me 
to  think  that,  through  this  accidental  link  of  my  journey 
with  the  Prince,  her  death  has  assumed  something  at  least 
of  a  national  character,  and  her  worth  has  been  recognised 
by  such  poor  recognition  as  sovereigns  can  give  too  late. 

'"Where  is  she  now  "  —  a  question  that  she  asked 
again  and  again,  as  our  different  friends  and  relations 
passed  away,  always  with  the  same  perfect  reliance  on  the 
"judgment  of  God  according  to  truth."  You  will  hear 
from  my  sisters  how  and  when  I  received  the  news.  It 
was  in  the  most  blessed  interval,  the  only  interval  of  repose 
that  the  journey  would  have  allowed. 

'  One  of  the  few  new  reflections  that  this  journey  left 
upon  me  was  the  fact  that  this  is  the  last  century,  proba- 
bly, that  will  see  the  Egyptian  paintings  and  sculptures. 
But  I  cannot  now  write  of  these  things. 

'  I  must  end.  I  can  write  of  nothing  else,  and  if  I  write 
of  her  I  have  no  bounds.  Tell  me  what  is  said  of  her, 
what  you  see  of  my  sisters.  I  know  of  nothing  else  that 
I  can  ask  for.' 

The  news  had  reached  Stanley  'at  the  most  blessed  time 
and  place,'  if  the  end  was  destined  to  come  during  his 
absence.  It  had  come,  not  in  the  hurry  of  travelling,  nor 
in  the  whirl  of  parties,  but  at  the  quiet  close  of  a  journey, 
in  the  interval  of  repose  between  Egypt  and  Palestine.  It 


CHAi'.  xviii    INTENSITY  OF  STANLEY'S  GRIEF 


77 


was  broken  to  him,  in  the  tenderest  manner,  by  the  most 
considerate  of  men.  All  that  the  kindness  of  his  travelling- 
companions  could  do  to  alleviate  the  agony  of  his  grief 
was  done.  He  felt  also  that  he  already  knew  his  mother's 
inmost  mind,  that  he  would  have  gained  nothing  from  his 
presence  at  the  final  scene,  and  that,  as  he  writes  to  the 
Bishop  of  London,  the  accidental  connection  of  his  name 
'  with  a  matter  of  public  interest  has  given  at  least  some- 
thing of  a  public  recognition  to  a  character  and  a  mind  so 
grand  and  beautiful,  and  yet,  out  of  her  own  circle,  so  little 
known.'  But  he  was  weighed  down  by  the  absence  of  any- 
one who  had  known  his  mother  well.  No  one  was  aware 
what  mother  and  son  had  been  to  each  other,  how  great 
the  debt  which  he  owed  to  her,  how  all  that  he  did  was 
done  with  a  view  to  her  approval,  how  implicitly  he  relied 
upon  her  quiet  wisdom  and  tender  sympathy.  The 
'  guardian  genius,'  to  use  his  own  words,  '  had  passed 
away  that  nursed  his  very  mind  and  heart.'  The  outer 
world  might  regard  the  death  of  Mrs.  Stanley  as  the  death 
of  an  aged  parent,  which  it  was  natural,  but  useless,  to 
lament.  Yet  none  the  less  'the  heart  knoweth  his  own 
bitterness.' 

His  mother's  dying  wishes  were  paramount  with  him. 
She  had  desired  that  he  should  continue  his  journey.  But 
it  was  with  a  heavy  heart  that  he  proceeded  on  his  way. 
Continually  the  sense  of  his  loss  breaks  out  into  words. 
The  return  to  Alexandria  suggests  the  contrast  of  his  visit 
a  month  before,  when  '  I  saw  all  things  as  for  her,  and  she 
was  still  with  us  on  earth.'  On  Sunday,  March  30th,  his  loss 
is  present  to  him  as  he  preaches  on  the  text,  '  Gather  up 
the  fragments  that  remain.' ^  H.M.S.  Osborne  was  then 
lying  in  the  port  of  Jaffa,  and  the  party  were  preparing  to 
land  in  Palestine. 

*  Sermon  IV.  of  the  Sermons  in  the  East:  'The  fragments  that  remain.' 


78 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


'  We  had  the  service  on  board  the  Osborne  on  Sunday 
morning.  I  preached  on  "Gather  up  the  fragments." 
Just  before  the  service  began,  and  whilst  I  was  sitting 
alone,  Meade  came  in,  and  in  the  tenderest  manner  said, 
"  Is  not  this  too  much  for  you.''"  "No,"  I  said,  "it  will 
be  the  greatest  comfort  to  me,"  and  so  it  was  ;  you  can 
imagine  what  I  said.' 

'  Every  dispensation  of  Providence/  says  Stanley  in  that 
sermon,  '  is  a  kind  of  miracle  wrought  for  our  benefit.'  Of 
such  a  character  is  any  'signal  visitation  of  joy  or  of  sorrow.' 

'  It  is  possible  to  drive  such  a  blessing  or  such  a 
calamity  out  of  our  thoughts,  and  cut  off  all  its  consequences. 
But  it  is  possible  also,  and  it  is  far  better,  to  "  gather  up  all 
the  fragments  "  that  it  has  left,  to  see  what  it  has  taught  us 
which  we  knew  not  before  —  of  our  strength,  of  our  weak- 
ness, of  God,  of  our  own  soul.  Or  it  may  be  that  we  have 
known  a  noble  character,  a  good  example.  It  has  gone 
from  us  ;  it  is  absent  from  us  ;  we  see  it  no  more.  Shall 
we  blot  out  its  remembrance Shall  we  think  that  "  out 
of  sight  is  out  of  mind  } "  or  shall  we  not  rather  "  gather 
up  all  the  fragments  that  remain  "  —  all  the  sayings,  all  the 
doings,  all  the  memories  of  such  a  character,  that  they 
may  still  cheer,  and  sustain,  and  guide,  and  warn  us  in 
our  passage  through  this  mortal  life  ? ' 

To  his  letters  from  home  he  looked  forward  with  eager 
delight,  for  they  bridged  over  the  chasm  of  distance  which 
left  so  dreary  a  void.  On  his  journey  from  Jaffa  to 
Jerusalem,  in  the  train  of  the  first  heir  to  the  English  throne 
who,  since  Edward  I.  and  Eleanor,  had  visited  the  Holy 
City,  the  thought  was  present  of  'the  one  transfigured  soul 
to  whom  every  step  of  this  march,  both  in  its  exalted 
and  inferior  aspect,  would  have  had  so  profound  an  interest.' 
To  see  Hebron  was  one  of  the  ambitions  of  his  life.  The 
desire  was  realised.  But  '  it  was  not  what  it  would  have 
been  a  month  ago.'  On  April  15th,  his  mother's  birthday,, 
he  was  passing  over  the  corner  of  the  Plain  of  Megiddo, 


CHAP.  XVIII  DECISION  TO  CONTINUE  THE  TOUR  79 


which  was  the  actual  scene  of  Barak's  victory.  It  was 
new  ground  to  him.  '  How  she  would  have  rejoiced,'  he 
thinks,  'at  my  gaining  on  this  day  any  new  touches  for 
my  lectures.'  But  though  the  sense  of  his  loss  was  never 
absent,  the  pain  was  resolutely  repressed.  It  was,  he 
believed,  his  duty  to  continue  the  expedition.  It  was,  he 
knew,  his  mother's  wish  that  he  should  do  so.  To  throw 
himself  into  the  work  that  lay  immediately  before  him 
with  all  the  force  of  his  nature  was  at  once  the  wisest  and 
the  most  unselfish  course.  'When  this  service  is  over,' 
he  writes, 

'and  I  return,  I  know,  of  course,  there  will  be  so  much  to 
say  and  hear  about  it  that,  perhaps,  the  first  words  with 
everyone  will  be  about  this  expedition.  But  I  hope  that 
all  those  who  have  felt  with  me  so  kindly  and  deeply  will 
still  be  able  to  go  back  to  the  one  thought  which  lies 
smothered  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  under  all  this  compli- 
cation of  cares  and  pleasures  and  business.  I  daresay  that 
my  fellow-travellers,  and  still  more  those  whom  I  casually 
meet,  would  say,  if  they  think  about  it  at  all,  "  How  he 
has  got  over  it ;  how  little  he  seems  to  remember  what  he 
only  heard  a  week  or  a  fortnight  ago."  So,  in  one  sense,  it 
is.  I  must  be  either  the  one  thing  or  the  other  ;  and  I  can 
only  carry  on  the  journey  by  throwing  it  off.  But  the 
effect  is  to  make  the  whole  of  each  day  pointless  and  blank  ; 
at  night  and  at  waking  a  dull,  confused  sense  of  the  change 
comes  over  me,  and  then  I  try  to  take  refuge  in  those 
good  thoughts  which  everyone  wishes  for  me,  and  presumes 
that  I  have,  but  which,  alas !  seem  often  so  very  far  away 
—  with  her,  beyond  the  reach  of  recall.' 

The  Prince  of  Wales  landed  at  Jaffa  on  March  31st,  1862. 
His  entrance  into  the  Holy  Land  and  his  approach  to 
Jerusalem  followed  the  footsteps  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion 
and  Edward  I.  The  long  cavalcade,  escorted  by  a  troop 
of  Turkish  cavalry,  whose  spears  and  pennons  glittered  in  ' 
the  Syrian  sun,  climbed  the  pass  of  Beth-horon,  and  caught 
their  first  view  of  the  Holy  City  from  the  spot  where  Richard 


8o 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


hid  his  face  in  his  shield  and  said,  '  Ah !  Lord  God,  if  I  am 
not  thought  worthy  to  win  back  the  Holy  Sepulchre  I  am 
not  worthy  to  see  it.' 

'  By  this  time  the  cavalcade  had  increased.  The 
Turkish  Governor,  the  English  clergy,  groups  of  ragged 
Jews,  Franciscan  monks,  Greek  clergy.  Here  and  there, 
under  the  clumps  of  trees,  groups  of  children  singing 
hymns,  the  stragglers  at  last  becoming  a  crowd.  The  long 
retinue  of  spearmen  before  and  behind,  the  clatter  of  the 
horses'  hoofs  on  the  broken  stones  of  the  execrable  road 
drowning  every  other  sound  —  and  this  increasing  as  we 
passed  under  the  walls.  The  Prince  at  the  head  of  the 
motley  procession,  which,  barbarous  and  ragged  as  it  was, 
still  seemed  to  contain  the  representatives,  the  offscourings, 
if  you  will,  of  all  nations.  That  evening,  and  the  evening 
before,  the  Prince  came  to  my  tent  to  get  the  names  of 
the  places  he  had  seen  correctly  written  down  in  his 
Journal,  and  on  the  first  evening  (the  Sunday)  he  said,  on 
going  out,  in  the  most  engaging  manner,  "  You  see  that  I 
am  trying  to  do  what  I  can  to  carry  out  what  you  said  in 
your  sermon  "  (gather  up  the  fragments).* 

The  city  and  its  neighbourhood  were  carefully  explored 
—  the  hills  of  Judaea,  Bethlehem,  the  ruined  groves  of 
Jericho,  and,  above  all,  Bethany. 

'.  .  .  Late  in  the  afternoon  we  reached  Bethany.  I 
then  took  my  place  close  beside  the  Prince.  Everyone 
else  fell  back,  by  design  or  accident,  and  at  the  head  of  the 
cavalcade  we  moved  on  towards  the  famous  view.  This  was 
the  one  half-hour  which,  throughout  the  journey,  I  had 
determined  to  have  alone  with  the  Prince,  and  I  succeeded. 
I  pointed  out  each  stage  of  the  Triumphal  Entry  —  the 
"fig-trees,"  the  "stones,"  the  first  sight  of  Jerusalem,  the 
acclamations,  the  palms,  the  olive-branches,  the  second 
sight,  where  "  He  beheld  the  city,  and  wept  over  it." 

'  The  whole  cavalcade  paused  on  that  long  ledge.  It 
was  as  impressive  to  me,  and  as  authentic,  as  ever.  I 
thought  of  Ammergau ;  I  thought  of  the  many  times  I  had 
talked  over  this  very  moment  with  our  dearest  mother.  I 
turned  round  to  call  the  attention  of  the  rest  of  the  party, 
and  as  I  turned  I  saw,  and  bade  the  Prince  look  round  too, 


CHAP.  XVIII 


MOHAMED 


8i 


the  only  detail  which  could  have  been  worth  noticing  on 
such  an  occasion  —  a  flock  of  white  sheep  and  black  goats 
feeding  on  the  mountain-side,  the  groundwork  of  the  great 
parable,  delivered  also  from  this  hillside,  on  the  Day  of 
judgment. 

'  The  cavalcade  moved  on  again,  and  I  fell  to  the  rear, 
feeling  that  I  had  at  least  done  my  best.  How  often  I 
felt  as  if  my  tongue  clove  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth  !  By 
the  Valley  of  Jehoshaj^hat  we  returned,  and  so  the  day 
closed.' 

During  one  of  his  rides  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Jeru- 
salem Stanley  met  again,  to  his  intense  delight,  his  old 
servant  Mohamed  : 

'  As  I  was  picking  my  way  over  the  rocks  a  Mussulman 
rushed  out  from  some  European  tents  close  by,  stopjoed  my 
horse,  seized  my  hand,  and  covered  it  with  kisses.  "  Oh  ! 
my  master,  my  dear  master."  It  was  Mohamed  !  He  ran 
along  by  the  side  of  my  horse,  I  pressing  his  hand,  and  he 
still  kissing  mine.    We  parted  at  the  descent  of  the  hill.' 

The  Holy  Place  and  the  sacred  spectacle  which  Stanley 
most  regretted  to  have  left  unseen  on  his  first  visit  to  Pales- 
tine in  1853  were  the  Mosque  of  Hebron  and  the  Samaritan 
Passover  on  Mount  Gerizim.  He  was  now  enabled  not 
only  to  witness  the  most  interesting  vestige  of  the  earliest 
Jewish  ritual,  but  to  penetrate  to  the  jealously-guarded 
sanctuary,  first  Jewish,  then  Christian,  then  Mussulman, 
which  is  supposed  to  cover  the  Cave  of  Machpelah.  Had 
his  journey  borne  no  other  fruit,  he  would  have  felt  himself 
richly  rewarded.^ 

The  visit  to  the  Mosque  of  Hebron  was  a  triumph  for 
the  diplomacy  of  General  Bruce.  Since  1 187  no  European, 
except  in  disguise,  was  known  to  have  set  foot  within  the 
sacred  precincts.    Even  to  royal  personages  the  Mosque 

'  Detailed  accounts,  both  of  the  Mosque  and  of  tlie  Passover,  will  be  found 
in  the  appendices  to  Vol.  i.  of  Stanley's  History  of  the  yeivish  Church.  But 
his  letters,  written  at  the  time  and  on  the  spot,  have  an  independent  interest. 
VOL.  II  G 


82 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


had  remained  hermetically  sealed  for  nearly  seven  hundred 
years.  Through  lines  of  soldiers  the  entrance  of  the  Mosque 
was  reached.    In  the  narrow  streets 

'hardly  a  face  was  visible  in  the  houses  as  we  passed  —  only 
the  solitary  figure  of  a  guard  standing  on  every  housetop, 
evidently  to  secure  that  no  stones  should  be  thrown  down. 
In  short  it  was  a  complete  military  occupation. 

'  At  last  we  reached  the  corner  of  the  great  Jewish 
enclosure.  Up  the  sharp  flight  of  stairs,  gazing  at  the 
huge  polished  stones,  we  mounted.  At  the  summit  we 
turned  inside,  and  here  immediately  were  met  by  the 
chief  guardian  of  the  Mosque.  No  one  could  be  more 
courteous  than  he  was,  declaring  that  for  no  one  but  for 
the  eldest  son  of  the  Queen  of  England  would  he  have 
allowed  this ;  sooner  should  the  princes  of  any  other 
nation  have  passed  over  his  body.  There  was  a  deep 
groan  from  the  attendants  when  the  shrine  of  Abraham 
was  opened,  redoubled  at  the  shrine  of  Jacob  and  of  Joseph. 
You  may  imagine  my  feelings  when  I  thrust  my  arm  down 
as  far  as  I  could  to  reach  into  the  rocky  vault,  and  when  I 
knelt  down  to  ascertain  how  far  the  tomb  of  Abraham  was 
part  of  the  native  mountain. 

'  When  we  all  came  out,  I  know  not  what  feelings  pre- 
ponderated. I  must  say  that  the  person  for  whom  I  felt 
the  most  was  General  Bruce.  ...  It  was  a  most  suc- 
cessful piece  of  diplomacy,  and  when  we  returned  to  the 
encampment  I  went  up  immediately  to  congratulate  him. 
He  said  that  he  had  been  most  desirous  of  making  the 
attempt,  not  only  on  the  Prince's  account,  but  on  mine,  .  .  . 
and  that  the  Prince,  from  the  first,  had  made  my  entrance 
an  indispensable  condition  of  his  going  at  all.  I  expressed 
my  gratitude,  only  could  not  help  adding  that  it  was  not 
now  what  it  would  have  been  a  month  ago.  .  .  .  From 
him  I  went  to  the  Prince,  to  thank  him,  and  to  express  how, 
but  for  him,  I  should  never  have  had  this  great  opportunity. 
"  Well,"  he  said,  with  touching  and  almost  reproachful 
simplicity,  "high  station,  you  see,  has,  after  all,  some  merits, 
some  advantages."  "  Yes,  sir,"  I  replied,  "and  I  hope  that 
you  will  always  make  as  good  use  of  it."  ' 

On  April  9th  the  party  returned  to  Jerusalem,  and  the 
following  morning  left  it  for  Bethel,  Shiloh,  and  Nablus.  On 


CHAP,  xvm        THE  SAMARITAN  PASSOVER 


83 


April  1 2th  was  held  the  Samaritan  Passover.  The  whole 
male  Samaritan  community  were  camped  on  the  terrace 
below  the  summit  of  Mount  Gerizim. 

'  At  three-quarters  of  an  hour  before  sunset  the  prayers 
began.  Presently,  suddenly  there  appeared  among  the 
worshippers  six  sheep,  guarded  by  some  of  the  youths. 
They  wandered  to  and  fro  in  the  crowd,  so  innocent  — 
and  the  young  men  who  tended  them  so  simple  in  their 
appearance  —  that  it  was  like  a  pastoral  scene  in  a  play,  or 
like  one  of  the  tableaux  at  Ammergau. 

'The  sun,  which  had  hitherto  burnished  up  the  Medi- 
terranean Sea  in  the  distance,  now  sank  very  nearly  to  the 
farthest  western  ridge.  The  recitation  of  prayers  became 
more  vehement ;  indeed  it  was,  I  believe,  the  recitation 
from  the  early  chapters  of  Exodus.  The  sheep  were  driven 
more  closely  together,  still  perfectly  playful.  The  sun 
touched  the  ridge.  The  youths  burst  into  a  wild  chant, 
and  drew  their  long,  bright  knives,  and  brandished  them  in 
the  air.  In  a  moment  the  sheep  were  thrown  on  their 
backs,  and  the  long  knives  were  drawn  across  their  throats. 
There  were  a  few  silent  convulsions  —  "  dumb  as  a  sheep 
that  openeth  not  his  mouth  "  — and  the  six  forms  lay  life- 
less on  the  ground,  with  the  blood  streaming  from  them, 
the  one  only  Jewish  sacrifice  that  remains  in  the  world. 

'  In  the  blood  the  young  men  dipped  their  fingers,  and 
marked  the  foreheads  and  noses  of  all  the  children  —  not 
the  doors  of  the  tents  nor  the  faces  of  the  grown-up.  It 
was,  as  they  explained  it,  a  kind  of  relic  of  the  past,  of 
which  only  this  fragment  remained.  It  sounds  hardly 
anything  in  relating  it ;  but  there  was  a  wildness  about  it 
which  was  extremely  striking,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  it 
carries  one  back  beyond  any  other  institution  to  those 
ancient  days. 

'The  next  process  was  the  skinning  and  roasting.  For 
this  a  trough  and  a  deep  hole  were  prepared.  In  both  vines 
and  brambles  (those  of  Jotham's  parable)  were  thrown  and 
set  on  fire.  Over  those  in  the  trough  were  placed  two 
cauldrons,  and  again,  amidst  the  recitation  of  Exodus  xii., 
the  water  boiled,  and,  when  it  had  boiled  enough,  was 
poured  by  the  same  youths  over  the  dead  sheep,  to  take  off 
their  wool.  Their  legs  were  torn  off  and  thrown  aside, 
and  the  sheep  themselves  were  spitted  on  long  poles  — 


84 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


hardly  crosses,  as  it  has  been  sometimes  said  —  and  they 
were  hoisted  aloft,  and  were  prepared  to  be  sunk  into  the 
second  hole,  filled  v/ith  burning  faggots,  to  roast  them. 

'  By  this  time  it  was  past  eight,  and  the  question  arose, 
how  long  it  would  be  before  the  feast  took  place  —  three, 
four,  or  five  hours  ?  One  after  another  the  different  mem- 
bers of  the  party  gave  way,  and  at  last  all  determined  to 
return  to  the  tents  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain.  I,  however, 
was  resolved  to  remain.  They  were  extremely  good,  made 
no  difficulties,  and  accordingly,  with  Waters,  I  retired  to 
one  of  the  Samaritan  tents  and  slept,  or  tried  to  sleep. 
Strange  feeling!  —  we  two  the  only  Europeans  on  that  wild 
mountain  height,  in  the  midst  of  this  ancient  sect,  to  wit- 
ness the  only  direct  vestige  of  the  Jewish  Passover. 

'  At  half-past  one  we  were  roused.  The  moon  was  still 
bright,  and  high  in  the  heavens.  The  whole  male  commu- 
nity was  gathered  round  the  hole,  now  closed  up  with  wet 
earth,  where  the  six  sheep  were  being  roasted.  Mats  were 
arranged  for  them,  on  which  we  were  not  allowed  to  tread. 
Indeed,  it  was  curious  to  see  how  totall}'  we  were  disre- 
garded, as  though  we  did  not  exist.  Then  the  hole  was 
opened.  A  cloud  of  steam  and  smoke  burst  forth,  remind- 
ing one  of  Heber's  line,  so  remarkable  as  showing  how  he 
had  caught  the  peculiarities  of  the  country  — 

Smokes  on  Gerizim's  mount  Samaria's  sacrifice, 

and  out  were  brought  on  their  long  poles  the  sheep,  their 
heads  and  ears  still  visible,  black  from  the  oven.  They 
were  thrown  on  the  mats.  The  mats  were  laid  out  between 
two  files  of  the  Samaritans. 

'Those  who  were  in  white  had  ropes  round  their  waists 
("girded"),  staves  in  their  hands,  and  shoes  on  their  feet. 
A  long  wild  chant  burst  out,  which  suddenly  stopped,  and 
down  they  all  sank  on  their  haunches  and  set  to  work  on 
the  masses  of  fiesh  before  them.  They  did  not  seize  it 
with  so  much  "  haste  "  as  I  had  been  led  to  expect.  But 
they  ate  in  perfect  silence,  and  so  rapidly  that  in  ten  minutes 
it  was  all  gone  but  a  few  bones  and  scraps,  which  were 
gathered  up  in  the  mats  and  placed  in  a  bundle  over  the 
fire,  which  was  once  m.ore  kindled.  By  its  light  and  with 
candles  the  whole  ground  was  searched  for  fragments,  as  if 
they  were  the  particles  of  sacramental  bread.  These  were 
thrown  on  the  burning  mass,  and  a  huge  bonfire  was  stirred 


CHAP.  XVIII        EASTER  AT  LAKE  TIBERIAS 


85 


up,  which  lit  up  the  mountain  and  then  gradually  died 
away,  and  left  us  to  return  home. 

'It  was  now  about  2.30  a.m.,  and  Waters  and  I,  alone 
with  two  guides,  picked  our  way  (the  horses  having  been 
sent  down  before)  over  the  rugged  mountain,  by  the  light 
of  the  moon,  back  to  camp,  and  there — about  3.30 —  got 
into  bed  and  fell  fast  asleep.' 

Easter  Sunday,  April  20th,  1862,  was  spent  by  the 
shores  of  Lake  Tiberias. 

'  Halfway  between  Tabor  and  Tiberias  we  were  enter- 
tained by  a  famous  Bedouin  chief,  who  had  protected  the 
Christians  during  the  massacres.  ...  It  was  my  first  sight 
of  the  kind,  and  was  exceedingly  interesting.  I  looked  at 
everything  with  a  view  to  Abraham  and  to  Jael,  and  have 
now  a  far  better  notion  of  both  than  I  had  before.  .  .  . 
He  was  much  gratified  by  the  Prince's  visit,  kissed  his  foot 
in  the  stirrup,  and  offered  him  two  mares.  .  .  . 

'  It  was  Easter-eve.  The  Prince  and  I  rode  alone  over 
the  hills.  He  made  the  best  proposals  for  the  arrangement 
of  the  Communion  the  next  day,  and  spoke  much  of  you,^ 
of  Catherine,'^  of  our  dear  mother,  ...  of  his  father.  "  It 
will  be  a  sad  Easter  for  me,"  he  said.  .  .  .  "Yes,"  I  said,  "and 
a  sad  one  for  me.  But  I  am  sure  that,  if  your  father  and 
my  mother  could  look  down  upon  us,  they  would  be  well 
satisfied  that  we  should  both  be  at  this  time  in  this  place." 

'.  .  .  Suddenly  we  reached  the  ledge  of  the  cliffs,  and  the 
whole  view  of  the  Lake  burst  upon  us.  He  quite  screamed 
with  surprise  and  pleasure.  "  So  unexpected  and  so  beau- 
tiful." It  was,  indeed,  that  view  of  which  I  am  always 
afraid  to  speak,  lest  the  glory  of  the  recollection  should 
tempt  me  to  exaggerate  its  real  character.  But  on  that 
evening,  the  setting  sun  throwing  its  soft  light  over  the 
descent,  the  stormy  clouds  flying  to  and  fro,  it  was  truly 
grand  ;  .  .  .  and  when  we  found  our  tents  pitched  at  the 
bottom  of  the  hill,  by  the  old  walls  of  Tiberias,  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  Lake,  General  Bruce  came  up  to  me  and  said, 
"  You  have  indeed  done  well  for  to-morrow." 

'  From  the  moment  that  it  had  become  possible  that 
we  should  be  here  on  Easter-day  I  had  fixed  my  heart 
upon  it,  and  when  Easter-day  broke  I  went  out  early  to 


*  Mary  Stanley. 


^  Mrs.  Vaughan. 


86 


UFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


look  at  the  view.  The  eastern  hills  were  dark ;  the  sun, 
behind  a  bank  of  black  clouds,  poured  down  its  first  rays 
on  the  calm  Lake,  and  the  western  tops  were  tinged  with 
golden  light.  At  10  we  had  our  service  in  the  great  tent. 
We  were  all  there.  I  selected  what  I  thought  the  most 
essential  parts  of  the  service  for  Easter-day.  (H.  P.  will, 
I  am  sure,  like  to  know  what  it  was.)  I  began  with  the 
anthem,  "  Christ  our  Passover^  .  .  .  Then  the  special 
Psalms,  then  Ex.  xii.  (especially  appropriate  after  the 
Samaritan  Passover),  Te  JDeimi,  Rom.  vi..  Jubilate,  and 
then  the  whole  Communion  Service. 

'  I  preached  on  John  xxi.,  taking  the  chapter  through 
piece  by  piece.  ...  It  was  certainly  a  very  solemn  occasion, 
and  I  am  thankful  we  had  it  there,  and  not  in  Jerusalem, 
amidst  the  clatter  of  the  contending  Churches. 

'  After  a  long,  quiet  morning  we  strolled  into  the  filthy 
town,  and  then,  glad  to  escape  from  it,  walked  along  the 
shores  to  the  hot  springs,  and  thence  far  away,  farther 
than  I  had  ever  reached  before,  to  the  hill  immediately 
overhanging  the  exit  of  the  Jordan.  Altogether,  it  was  to 
me  the  climax  of  the  tour  to  have  had  our  Good  Friday  ser- 
vice at  Nazareth,  and  our  Easter  Communion  on  the  shores 
of  the  Sea  of  Galilee.  ..." 

On  the  journey  from  Tiberias  to  Damascus  Stanley  was 
again  able  to  gratify  a  wish  which  had  remained  unfulfilled 
in  1853. 

'  Then  came  a  totally  new  country  to  me  —  the  hills  of 
Naphtali.  In  the  midst  of  them,  on  a  green  upland  plain, 
was  a  place  I  particularly  wished  to  see  —  Kadesh-Naph- 
tali,  the  Holy  Place  of  that  great  tribe,  the  birthplace  of 
Barak,  and  close  by  the  scene  of  the  murder  of  Sisera.  It 
is  described  in  Judges  iv.  as  taking  place  under  the  tere- 
binth (oak),  .  .  .  and  it  was  delightful  to  see  how  many  tere- 
binths still  grew  on  the  plain.  H.  R.  H.  and  I  both  tore 
away  a  small  branch,  he  for  the  Princess  Royal,  for  whom 
he  has  made  a  collection  of  flowers  or  leaves  from  almost 
every  famous  spot  he  has  seen.  .  .  .' 

The  tent-life  was  now  all  but  over,  and,  as  the  party 
approaches  Damascus,  Stanley  gives  a  detailed  account  of 
a  typical  day's  journey  through  the  Holy  Land  : 


CHAP.  XVIII 


TENT-LIFE 


87 


'There  is  still  a  pause  on  this  hot  afternoon,  which  I 
will  employ  in  giving  you  an  account  of  our  life  —  in  tents 

—  now  passing  away.  I  will  begin  with  the  evening.  You 
must  imagine  us  winding  down  some  hillside.  In  front  is 
usually  the  Prince,  in  his  white  robe,  with  his  gun  by  his 
side.  Close  by  him,  also  in  a  white  burnous,  is  the  in- 
terpreter (Noel  Moore),  who  must  always  be  with  him  as 
we  approach  any  town,  to  be  prepared  for  the  arrival  of 
some  petty  governor  coming  out  to  meet  us,  and  falling  on 
his  knees  to  kiss  the  Prince's  stirrup.  Not  far  off  come 
Keppel  and  Meade,  Keppel  in  his  grey  shooting-jacket  and 
wideawake,  Meade  in  his  flying  white  burnous,  and  Kefieh 
(red  and  yellow  silk  handkerchief)  round  his  head,  looking 
exactly  like  a  Bedouin.  Then,  perhaps,  the  General, 
Dr.  Minter,  and  A.  P.  S.  in  grey.  Dr.  M.  and  A.  P.  S. 
always  in  helmets.  Teesdale,  in  brown,  is  perpetually 
poking  about  on  the  outskirts  for  partridges,  or  vultures,  or 
gazelles.    "  He  never  fires  but  he  kills,"  says  Waters. 

'  Then,  not  altogether  parted  from  us,  and  always 
within  reach  of  communication,  come  the  great  Kann6,  the 
courier;  Downie,  the  gigantic  and  learned  Scot,  generally 
leading  his  horse  to  spare  him  ;  the  Prince's  valet,  very  quiet 
and  spare  of  words  —  Crosse  —  somewhat  gloomy  in  appear- 
ance, but  full  of  work ;  Macdonald,  the  youngest  of  the 
party;  Waters  (unless  lingering  to  have  a  shot  at  a  curious 
bird),  sticking  as  close  to  A.  P.  S.  as  he  can.  Around,  or 
behind,  or  before,  but  usually  as  we  approach  the  encamp- 
ment scampering  over  everybody  in  violent  haste  to  be 
close  to  H.  R.  H.,  the  long  array  of  fifty  mounted  spearmen, 
their  red  pennons  flashing  through  the  rocks  and  thickets 
as  they  descend,  commanded  by  two  well-known  personages 

—  well-known,  I  mean,  to  us  through  their  familiar  faces, 
though  unable  to  exchange  a  word  with  anyone  except 
Moore,  and  a  few  words  of  Turkish  with  Teesdale,  and  of 
Arabic  with  Meade.  .  .  .  They  have  been  with  us  all  the 
way  from  Jaffa. 

'We  descend,  and  the  servants  gallop  to  the  front,  in 
order  to  make  the  most  of  their  time  before  we  reach  the 
tents.  We  find  the  tents  just  pitched,  usually  on  some  grassy 
platform  by  a  running  brook.  Tea  and  coffee  come  round 
to  us.  By  this  time  the  sun  has  set,  and,  if  there  is  nothing 
to  be  seen,  A.  P.  S.  has  withdrawn  to  his  tent  and  either 
writes  or  has  a  gentle  sleep ;  whilst  Waters,  at  the  door  of 


88 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


the  tent,  is  stuffing  a  dove  or  a  partridge  ;  sometimes  a  huge 
vulture  is  hung  up  over  the  door.  Little  visits  arc  ex- 
changed at  this  time,  and  the  different  books  handed 
about.  At  7  P.M.  a  bell  rings  —  once,  twice,  thrice  —  for 
dinner,  and  then  we  all  gather,  and  find  a  substantial  but 
not  luxurious  meal  (in  this  respect  a  great  and  beneficial 
contrast  to  the  Nile)  spread.  We  have  generally  a  very 
merry  dinner.  .  .  .  The  tastes  of  the  different  members 
of  the  party  are  very  freely  discussed,  particularly  the  aver- 
sion of  A.  P.  S.  to  rice,  and  his  love  for  biscuits,  oranges, 
and  tea. 

'  Dinner  ended,  we  adjourn  to  another  tent,  where  we 
all  lie  or  sit  on  carpets,  and  all,  except  A.  P.  S.  and  the 
General,  have  various  kinds  of  pipes.  On  cold  nights 
A.  P.  S.  brings  in  his  railwa3'^-rug,  and  then  Meade  and 
Keppel  always  insist  on  sitting  next  to  him  and  having  a 
corner  of  the  rug  to  themselves.  These  reunions  are  not 
very  lively — there  is  a  gradual  tendency  to  fall  asleep;  but 
now  and  then  we  have  stories,  and  on  one  or  two  nights  a 
really  animated  discussion.  Occasionally  there  are  guests 
—  the  governor  of  the  next  town,  or  a  Vice-Consul,  or  the 
Protestant  clergyman  of  the  place.  .  .  . 

'  At  break  of  day  the  first  sound  is  the  doctor's  voice 
going  about  to  see  his  patients,  under  whom  are  included 
any  sick  members  of  any  part  of  the  encampment  —  soldiers, 
muleteers,  servants,  &c.  Generally,  while  I  am  dressing 
the  doctor  comes  and  sits  outside  my  tent,  asking  for  in- 
formation for  his  journal  of  the  previous  day ;  and  on 
occasions  also  from  time  to  time  H.  R.  H.  drops  in,  partly 
to  ask  similar  questions,  partly  to  inspect  the  stuffing  opera- 
tions. At  7  A.M.  the  breakfast-bell  rings,  and  we  are  usually 
all  there.  At  8  a.m.  the  horses  are  saddled  and  we  upon 
them,  and  forth  we  go  much  as  I  described  our  entrance. 

'We  ride  on  over  hill  and  valley  till  noon,  and  then 
look  about  for  a  tree  and  water,  the  two  requisites  for  a 
luncheon-place.  We  find  it,  and  the  mule,  laden  with  cold 
meat,  oranges,  biscuits,  &c.,  which  always  keeps  pace  with 
us,  comes  up.  Carpets  and  we  all  spread  ourselves  out  — 
uncomfortably  if  the  tree  is  spare  and  the  ground  hard, 
most  delightfully  sometimes.  We  rest  for  about  two  hours. 
There  is  an  immense  consumption  of  oranges,  chiefly  between 
Meade  and  A.  P.  S. ;  and  then  the  General  gives  the  signal, 
and  the  party  somewhat  reluctantly  rises.  .  .  .  And  so  we 


CHAP,  xviii  THE  CEDARS  OF  LEBANON 


89 


toil  on  through  the  afternoon,  and  the  day  ends  as  I  have 
described. 

'  I  must  say  that,  considering  the  numbers,  the  diversity 
of  the  party,  the  variety  of  interests  and  pursuits,  the  tedium 
of  a  great  part  of  the  journey  to  one  section  or  other  of 
those  engaged,  the  tour  has  been  wonderfully  harmonious. 
This  must  always  be  put  down  to  its  credit.' 

From  Damascus  the  party  turned  westward,  and,  passing 
by  Baalbec,  reached  Beirut  on  May  6th.  After  visiting 
Tyre  and  Sidon  and  the  entrance  of  the  Dog  River,  they 
proceeded  to  Tripoli.  In  1853  the  snow  had  rendered  the 
cedars  of  Lebanon  inaccessible  from  the  side  of  Baalbec, 
and  Stanley  had  been  compelled  to  leave  the  cedars  unseen. 
Now,  however,  he  was  enabled  to  visit  them  by  the  easier 
approach  from  Tripoli  and  Ehden. 

'  The  cedars !  And  so  at  last,  contrary  to  all  expecta- 
tion, I  have  seen  them.  The  first  sight  of  them  produced 
an  impression  upon  me  wholly  unlike  that  which  (perhaps 
from  their  being  usually  described  by  those  who  approach 
them  from  above)  is  commonly  given. 

'  Imagine  a  vast  semicircle  of  mountains,  the  upper 
range  covered  with  snow,  the  lower  range,  which  is,  in  fact, 
the  deposit  of  glaciers,  shutting  up  this  upper  range  ;  and 
again,  in  the  heart  of  the  lower  range,  a  rich,  green,  culti- 
vated valley,  penetrating  till  it  ends  in  rocky  barrenness. 
Exactly  in  the  centre  of  the  view,  just  appearing  above  the 
lower  range  and  under  the  snowy  range,  you  see  a  black 
massive  cloud  or  clump  —  the  only  vegetation  on  the  whole 
horizon  till  your  eye  descends  on  the  green  valley  below. 
That  is  the  cedar-grove.  We  lost  sight  of  them  till,  on 
surmounting  the  intervening  rocks,  and  standing  on  the 
edge  of  a  ravine  which  parted  us  from  them,  one  after 
another,  through  the  mist  which  was  floating  round  us,  the 
trees  appeared  close  at  hand. 

•The  second  view  is,  perhaps,  disappointing,  for  what 
then  are  seen  are  only  the  youngest  cedars,  which  form  the 
outskirts  of  the  grove.  But  in  a  few  minutes  we  were  in 
the  midst  of  them,  and  although  again  they  were  different 
from  what  I  had  expected,  the  whole  effect  was  most  im- 


90 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1S62 


pressive.  They  stand  exactly  as  I  have  already  described 
in  the  first  view  of  them,  between  the  bare  rocky  range  and 
the  snowclad  heights  behind.  They  stand  in  a  little  island, 
as  it  were,  planted  in  the  centre  of  the  barren  mountains, 
an  island  consisting  of  seven  hills,  or  knolls,  of  which  six 
are  arranged  round  the  seventh  —  a  square  mount  in  the 
midst,  on  which  stands  the  rude  Maronite  chapel.  These 
knolls  give  a  peculiarity  to  the  place  for  which  I  was  not 
prepared.  The  great  old  cedars  are  not,  as  I  had  imagined, 
all  collected  together,  but  are  interspersed  with  their 
younger  brethren.  Two  or  three  stand  on  the  central 
knoll,  four  or  five  on  the  hill,  nearer  to  the  snow. 

'  In  one  respect  they  are  far  inferior  to  their  English 
descendants  :  they  have  no  wide-spreading  branches 
feathering  to  the  ground,  probably  from  their  closeness  to 
each  other.  One  of  them,  I  observed,  actually  supported 
in  its  gigantic  arms  a  lesser  tree  whose  trunk  was  quite 
decayed.  But  their  trunks  were  very  remarkable — so  huge, 
so  irregular,  so  venerable,  with  the  grey  scales  of  bark  that 
covered  them  as  with  a  skin.  ...  It  was  impossible  for 
us  to  carry  off  a  section  of  a  fallen  tree.  .  .  . 

'All  were  pleased  to  have  seen  them.  The  Prince  was 
very  anxious  that  we  should  have  the  service  under  their 
shade  (it  was  Sunday  morning).  I  gladly  consented,  pro- 
posing it  should  be  a  short  morning  service,  and  that  the 
evening  service  should  be  in  the  tents  on  our  return.  All 
was  prepared,  when  the  clouds  gathered  in  and  the  rain  came 
on  so  thick  and  fast  that  we  had  to  mount  in  haste  and  ride 
back  as  fast  as  we  could  to  Ehden,  which  we  reached  at 
two  P.M.  The  Palace  by  this  time  was  well  prepared  for 
us  with  carpets,  &c.,  and  here  in  the  afternoon  we  had  our 
last  Syrian  service.  I  added  my  Cedar  Sermon  to  the  one 
I  had  already  written  on  our  tent-life  (Numbers  x.  35,  36), 
especially  on  morning  and  evening  prayer.'^ 

On  May  13th,  1862,  the  party  left  the  shores  of  Syria. 
The  homeward  journey  carried  them  successively  to  Patmos, 
Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Constantinople,  Athens,  and  Malta.  At 
this  last  place  the  return  to  civilisation  was  marked  by 
Stanley's  purchase  of  '  a  new  ready-made  frock-coat,  with 


6  Sermon  X.  of  the  Sermons  in  the  East:  'The  Last  Encampment.' 


CHAP.  XVIII 


RETURN  TO  ENGLAND 


91 


which  Waters  and  H.  R.  H.  are  equally  delighted.'  The 
Eastern  tour  ended  at  Marseilles.  A  rapid  journey  across 
France  brought  the  travellers  back  to  England  on  June  13th, 
1862,  Stanley  still  wearing  the  beard,  in  which,  for  the 
amusement  of  his  friends,  he  was  photographed. 


92 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1862-63 


CHAPTER  XIX 
1862-63 

THE  DEATH  OF  GENERAL  BRUCE  — THE  BLANK  IN  STANLEY'S 
LIFE  LEFT  BY  HIS  MOTHER'S  DEATH  —  RUMOURS  OF  PRE- 
FERMENT —  COLENSO  ON  THE  PENTATEUCH  —  PUBLICATION 
OF  THE  FIRST  PART  OF  HIS  LECTURES  ON  THE  '  HISTORY 
OF  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH '  — LETTER  TO  THE  BISHOP  OF 
LONDON  ON  SUBSCRIPTION  — GROWING  INTIMACY  WITH 
THE  ROYAL  FAMILY— PUBLICATION  OF  THE  'SERMONS  IN 
THE  EAST' 

The  one  cloud  that  darkened  the  last  few  weeks  of  the 
Eastern  tour  was  the  serious  illness  of  General  Bruce.  At 
Constantinople  a  fever  declared  itself,  which  he  had  con- 
tracted, as  was  supposed,  in  the  unwholesome  marshes  in 
the  upper  valley  of  the  Jordan.  Harassed  by  his  many 
responsibilities,  and  exhausted  by  his  exertions,  he  was 
completely  prostrated.  For  several  days  his  condition 
caused  grave  alarm.  On  Saturday,  May  25th,  1862,  he 
had  so  far  recovered  that  Stanley  was  admitted  to  see  him. 

'  He  begged  that  I  would  come  again,  and  read  part  of 
the  Service  to  him.  I  read  most  of  the  119th  Psalm  for 
the  day,  and,  as  I  read  it,  could  not  help  thinking  how 
singularly  applicable  it  was  to  his  case.  His  temporary 
withdrawal  has  brought  to  my  mind  forcibly  all  that  he 
has  been  to  the  party.' 

After  leaving  Constantinople  General  Bruce  continued 
slowly  to  improve.  But  on  landing  in  England  he  was 
still  so  weak  that  he  could  not  travel  beyond  London. 
Stanley  was  therefore  requested  to  come  on  at  once  to 


CHAP.  XIX         DEATH  OF  GENERAL  BRUCE 


93 


Windsor,  in  order  that  the  Queen  might  learn  from  his  lips 
'how  all  is  and  has  been.'  He  arrived  on  Saturday,  June 
14th,  and  there,  by  Her  Majesty's  thoughtful  kindness,  he 
met  his  sister  Mary  for  the  first  time  since  his  mother's 
death.  There  also,  on  the  following  Sunday,  he  preached 
the  last  of  the  sermons^  published  in  the  volume  of 
'  Sermons  in  the  East,'  choosing  for  his  text  the  words 
that  are  inscribed  on  his  own  and  his  wife's  tomb :  '  I  see 
that  all  things  come  to  an  end,  but  Thy  commandment  is 
exceeding  broad  '  (Psalm  cxix.  96). 

Returning  to  London,  he  found  that  General  Bruce  was 
lying  dangerously  ill  at  St.  James's  Palace,  in  the  rooms  of 
his  sister,  Lady  Augusta  Bruce.  During  the  last  four 
months  Stanley  had  been  brought  into  daily  and  intimate 
contact  with  the  General.  The  tender  consideration  which 
the  Prince's  Governor  had  shown  towards  him  at  the  time 
of  his  mother's  death  bound  Stanley  to  him  by  a  sacred 
tie.  He  honoured  the  lofty  sense  of  responsibility  that 
stimulated  his  chivalrous  devotion  to  his  delicate  duties. 
He  valued  at  its  true  worth  the  graceful  courtesy  which 
never  failed  under  the  most  trying  circumstances,  and 
which  not  only  was  combined  with  tact,  firmness,  and 
decision,  but  was  the  real  expression  of  an  inherently  kind 
and  noble  nature.  Stanley  was  constantly  with  his  friend 
during  his  illness,  and  throughout  the  night  which  preceded 
his  death  in  the  early  morning  of  Friday,  June  27th,  1862. 
'It  was,'  said  he,  'the  very  first  time  that  I  had  seen  a 
human  soul  pass  with  full  consciousness  from  this  world  to 
the  world  beyond.'  Thoughtful  for  the  absent,  considerate 
for  others.  General  Bruce's  character  remained  the  same  to 
the  last.  His  courtesy  was  no  'outward  mask,  but  was 
shown  in  his  very  dying  moments,  when  the  last  prayer  had 

^  Sermon  XIV. :  *  The  Breadth  of  God's  Commandments.' 


94 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


been  breathed,  to  the  nurse  who  attended  him.  His  last 
farewell  seemed  waved  to  me  from  the  invisible  world.' 

The  death  of  General  Bruce  drew  Stanley  very  close  to 
his  widow  and  sister.  To  both  he  offered  a  sympathy 
which  was  always  elicited  by  the  grief  of  others,  but  which 
was  now  deepened  in  its  tenderness  both  by  his  own  recent 
bereavement  and  by  his  share  in  their  sorrow.  'The 
thought,'  writes  Mrs.  Bruce,  '  of  what  you  must  have  been 
to  my  dear  husband  during  the  last  four  months  of  his  life, 
and  the  recollection  of  the  help  you  gave  him  that  last 
night,  will  ever  be  most  consoling  to  me.'  Lady  Augusta 
Bruce,  writing  two  days  after  the  death  of  her  brother, 
talks  to  him  with  the  most  open-hearted  confidence  of  the 
late  General,  and  of  her  dead  mother  and  sister  Matilda. 
'  I  feel,'  she  says,  '  that  you  are  no  stranger  to  such 
memories  and  associations,  and  that  you  would  wish  to 
feel  a  living  interest  in  the  home  of  his  youth.  Once  more, 
may  God  bless  you  for  all  you  have  been  to  him  and  us ! ' 

General  Bruce  was  buried  at  Dunfermline,  where  Stanley 
performed  part  of  the  funeral  service. 

*  There  was  a  little  knot  of  ecclesiastical  difficulties 
which  I  had  not  anticipated.  Of  the  absence  of  a  surplice 
I  had  happily  thought  overnight,  and  sent,  on  a  chance,  to 
Dean  Ramsay,  whom  I  had  never  seen.  Then  it  appeared 
that  the  usual  practice  had  been  to  have  the  whole  service 
read  in  the  house,  the  vault  being  underneath  the  Presby- 
terian church  erected  in  the  ruins  of  the  Abbey.  A  com- 
promise was  proposed,  however,  that  the  first  part  of  the 
service  should  be  in  the  house,  and  the  rest  at  the  grave. 
(In  point  of  fact,  I  have  been  told  by  a  Presbyterian  since 
that  this  was  quite  needless  ;  they  are  now  accustomed  to 
funerals  with  the  English  service,  even  in  their  churches. 
However,  remembering  what  a  clatter  our  English  clergy 
are  making  at  having  any  other  than  our  own  service  read 
in  our  churchyards,  I  was  quite  content  with  what  would 
give  least  offence  —  certainly  as  much  as  I  had  any  right  to 
ask.)    The  coffin  was  laid,  I  think,  in  the  dining-room,  on 


CHAP.  XIX      FUNERAL  OF  GENERAL  BRUCE 


95 


a  table  hung  with  black.  The  room  was  quite  filled.  Both 
the  two  Presbyterian  ministers,  and  also  the  Episcopalian 
minister,  were  present.  I  stood  at  the  head  of  the  coffin, 
and  read  the  service  down  to  the  end  of  the  Lesson,  and 
then  added  the  last  prayer. 

'  Then  we  passed  into  another  room,  where,  at  a  table 
covered  with  a  white  cloth,  sate  the  Presbyterian  minister. 
He  read  a  chapter  (Job  xiv.),  and  offered  up  a  prayer, 
commonplace  but  inoffensive.  Then,  in  perfect  silence, 
first  wine  and  then  cake  were  handed  round  ;  and  then  the 
second  minister  read  another  chapter  (i  Thess.  iv.)  and 
another  prayer.  It  seems  that  this  is  a  relic  of  a  practice 
which  existed,  and  still  exists,  of  a  feast  given  to  the  friends, 
which  for  many  years  was  the  only  service  at  a  Scotch 
funeral,  the  clergyman  being  asked  merely  to  say  Grace 
before  and  after,  and  in  the  Grace  introducing  appropriate 
remarks.  The  meal  has  gradually  dwindled  away,  and  the 
Grace  has  passed  into  this  attempt  at  something  liturgical. 
We  then  went  off  in  mourning  carriages,  I  in  my  surplice, 
with  Thomas  and  Charles  Bruce  and  the  Presbyterian 
minister.  Dunfermline  is  two  miles  from  the  house.  We 
passed  through  the  churchyard  in  silence.  The  coffin  rested 
for  a  few  moments  at  the  entrance  of  the  vault,  during 
which  I  read  the  opening  sentences.  We  then  descended 
into  the  vault,  and  I  read  the  remainder  of  the  service  by 
the  light  of  the  candles  in  the  vault.  "  For  he  rests  from 
his  labo2irs  "  —  "  from  the  miseries  of  this  sinful  world,"  were 
the  words  which  most  were  borne  to  me.' 

In  watching  by  the  bedside  of  General  Bruce,  and  in 
offering  to  his  sorrowing  relations  every  consolation  which  a 
deep  and  heartfelt  sympathy  could  suggest,  Stanley  found 
the  best  relief  from  the  numbing  sense  of  his  own  loss. 
His  return  to  his  London  house  at  Grosvenor  Crescent,  and 
the  first  sight  of  the  corner  of  the  drawing-room  in  which 
his  mother  used  to  sit,  or  of  her  own  room,  in  which  he  had 
parted  from  her  five  months  before,  revived  his  grief  in  all 
its  first  anguish.  He  came  back,  as  Mrs.  Vaughan  wrote 
to  her  aunt,  Mrs.  Augustus  Hare,  'graver  and  more 
serious.    His  sorrow  is  of  that  deep,  silent  kind  which 


96 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


does  not  admit  of  any  relief.  One  sees  that  it  never  leaves 
him,  and  that  it  is  a  long,  continuous  suffering  that  has 
fallen  upon  him.'  In  the  interval  between  the  death  and 
funeral  of  General  Bruce  he  visited  Oxford.  Mrs.  Jacob- 
son,2  who  was  one  of  his  closest  friends  and  neighbours, 
remembered,  more  than  twenty-five  years  later,  his  return 
to  a  place  which  at  every  turn  was  alive  with  recollections 
of  his  mother. 

'  My  husband  and  I  knew  how  the  bereavement  of  his 
mother's  death  would  be  freshly  brought  back  to  his  loving 
heart  by  the  sight  of  the  places  where  she  had  been  so  much 
with  him,  and  how  lonely  he  would  feel.  I  hardly  liked 
to  go  to  his  door  for  fear  of  intruding  on  his  sorrow.  But 
early  on  Sunday  morning,  while  we  were  at  breakfast,  the 
door  opened,  and  he  came  in.  His  bright  smile  gave  way 
to  irrepressible  emotion,  and  he  flung  himself  on  a  chair 
behind  one  of  our  children,  of  whom  he  was  fond.  Bursting 
into  tears,  he  hid  his  face  behind  the  child's  curly  hair, 
thankful  to  conceal  the  anguish  of  his  lonely  heart.' 

For  the  first  few  days  the  pain  was  great  of  revisiting 
scenes  associated  with  his  mother's  presence.  Later  'it 
became,'  as  he  himself  says,  '  a  pleasure  rather  than  a  pain 
to  be  at  places  where  we  had  been  together.'  It  was  his 
chief  delight  to  carry  out  her  wishes  as  though  she  were 
still  living.  'I  have  much  to  do,'  he  writes  in  September 
1862,  'in  printing  my  lectures,  and  this,  after  all,  being  her 
last  desire  and  interest,  gives  me  more  real  satisfaction  and 
pleasure  than  anything  else.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  have  no 
rest  till  I  had  finished.'  When,  later  on  in  the  same  year, 
there  appeared  to  be  some  prospect  of  his  being  offered  a 
bishopric,  it  was  by  a  reference  to  her  advice  that  he  tried 
to  decide  on  the  course  which  in  that  case  he  would  adopt. 
'  My  dearest  child,'  he  writes  to  his  sister  Mary,  'you  may 
think  how  I  have,  over  and  over  again,  thought  what  our 

*  The  wife  of  Dr.  Jacobson,  then  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Chester. 


CHAP.  XIX     THE  BLANK  IN  STANLEY'S  LIFE 


97 


dearest  mother  would  have  said.'  In  accepting  the 
Deanery  of  Westminster  a  year  later,  it  is  again  by  the 
same  thought  that  he  is  mainly  guided.  '  It  was,'  he  tells 
Professor  Jowett,  '  the  one  change  my  dear  mother  desired 
for  me.' 

So  completely  had  his  mother  identified  herself  with  all 
his  interests,  so  entirely  had  he  relied  on  her  sympathy  and 
counsel,  that  months  elapsed  before  he  could  take  up  the 
threads  of  his  old  life.  He  had  lost  his  mainspring  of 
action,  and  his  despondency  is  clearly  shown  in  his  letters. 
'I  cannot,'  he  says,  'write  as  heretofore.'  The  hue  of 
everything  was  jchanged,  and  it  sometimes  seemed  that  the 
shadow  deepened  as  it  lengthened.  '  It  soothes  me,'  he 
writes  to  Professor  Jowett, 

'even  to  think  that  anyone  has  seen  that  dear  face  in 
a  dream.  Strange  that  this  should  hardly  ever  have  been 
the  case  with  me.  To  me,  the  pleasure  of  sleep  is  of  the 
land  where  all  things  are  forgotten,  and  —  then  —  day 
brings  back  my  night.' 

Writing  from  Foxhow,  near  Ambleside,  where  he  was 
staying  with  Mrs.  Arnold,  he  says  : 

'  Noiv,  for  the  first  time,  Arnold's  death,  and  all  that 
relates  to  it,  is  pushed  back  beyond  another  range.  You 
will  not  wonder  that  I  find  life  very  dull  —  a  burden,  which 
I  can  bear  cheerfully,  but  which  I  would  gladly  lay  down.' 

From  the  same  place,  a  year  later,  he  writes  to  Professor 
Jowett : 

'Nothing  that  has  happened,  nothing,  I  trust,  that  can 
ever  happen,  can  make  her  memory  other  than  the  greatest 
gift  I  have  received  —  a  gift  greater  even  than  that  which 
the  genius  hujtis  loci  was  in  its  time  to  me.' 

Yet  on  all  sides  he  had  much  to  arouse  him  from 
absorption  in  his  private  troubles.    Archbishop  Sumner 
died  on  September  6th,  1862,  and  in  Oxford,  where  Stanley 
VOL.  II  H 


98 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


was  then  keeping  his  residence  as  Canon,  the  one  absorb- 
ing topic  of  conversation  was  the  choice  of  his  successor, 
and  the  consequent  distribution  of  vacant  preferments. 
Though  never  anxious  for  preferment,  Stanley  always 
entered  into  such  discussions  with  eager  curiosity.  With 
his  own  name  rumour  v/as  busy.  He  could  not  avoid 
feeling  unsettled  when,  in  the  daily  press,  statements 
claiming  to  be  authoritative  assigned  to  him  this  or  that 
bishopric.  But  before  the  actual  death  of  Archbishop 
Sumner  he  had  written  on  the  prospect  of  his  obtaining 
preferment : 

'  My  friends  are,  I  daresay,  kindly  carving  out  im- 
aginary preferments  for  me  in  the  movements  which  the 
death  of  the  poor  Archbishop,  now  hourly  to  be  expected, 
is  likely  to  cause.  There  is  only  one  see,  as  you  know, 
which  I  should  think  worth  taking,  and  only  two 
deaneries,  neither  of  which  is  likely  to  be  vacant ;  so  that 
I  trust  there  is  no  chance  of  my  departure  from  Oxford, 
which,  for  many  reasons,  I  should  much  regret.' 

'  My  entreaty,'  he  tells  his  sister, 

'night  and  morning,  is  that  I  may  be  spared  the  neces- 
sity of  the  choice  and  the  pain  of  the  change.  I  long  to 
have  you  home  to  consult.  But  do  not  hurry  home,  for 
you  could  not  arrive  in  time  for  my  answer,  if  the  offer  is 
made.  If  it  is  not  made,  you  cannot  think  with  what  a 
feeling  of  grateful  relief,  almost  as  if  my  life  were  spared, 
I  shall  return  to  the  work  here.' 

'  York,'  he  says  in  another  letter,  '  I  should,  of  course, 
accept  willingly.  Still,  I  earnestly  hope  for  a  reprieve.' 
Gradually  the  vacancies  were  filled  up.  *  I  have  a  strong 
impression  that  there  was  no  solid  ground  for  any  of  the 
rumours  about  A.  P.  S.,  and  I  am  looking  forward  so  thank- 
fully to  a  renewed  lease  of  freedom  and  repose.'  'I  feel,' 
he  says  in  November,  'as  if  I  had  a  new  lease  of  life.  .  .  .' 
His  principal  anxiety,  as  the  autumn  advanced,  had  been 


CHAP.  XIX         RUMOURS  OF  PREFERMENT 


99 


the  possible  promotion  of  Dr.  Trench  to  the  See  of 
Gloucester,  and  the  consequent  offer  of  the  Deanery  of 
Westminster.  This  anxiety  was  finally  removed  by  the 
elevation  of  Dr.  EUicott  to  the  vacant  bishopric.  '  It  is,' 
writes  Stanley, 

'an  immense  relief  to  me  to  have  this  year  left  entirely 
free  to  digest  all  that  has  happened.  You  remember  how 
the  dear  mother  not  only  deprecated  any  bishopric,  but, 
though  she  occasionally  wished  for  one  of  the  London 
deaneries,  was  always  glad  to  find  that  neither  of  them  was 
likely  to  fall  vacant,  and  used  always  to  write  with  such 
joy  whenever  she  saw  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  looking  par- 
ticularly well.  I  should  have  felt  that  I  was  acting  against 
her  advice.  A  few  years,  or  perhaps  even  months,  when 
circumstances  have  changed,  I  should  not  feel  this  so  pain- 
fully.' 

Nor  was  the  possibility  of  his  elevation  to  a  bishopric 
or  a  deanery  the  only  distraction  which  diverted  Stanley's 
attention  from  his  private  troubles.  Contests,  in  which  he 
had  already  taken  a  conspicuous  part,  as  well  as  new  ques- 
tions, with  which  he  was  to  identify  himself  more  or  less 
prominently,  filled  the  air. 

At  Oxford,  the  tempest  stirred  by  the  endowment  of 
the  Greek  Professorship  was  still  raging.  The  terms  of  the 
subscription  required  for  University  degrees,  or  for  Holy 
Orders,  were  once  more  forced  to  the  front.  The  storm 
raised  by '  Essays  and  Reviews '  was  still  at  its  fiercest.  Other 
clouds  already  darkened  the  near  horizon.  In  the  autumn 
of  1 86 1  Bishop  Colenso  had  published  'A  Commentary  on 
the  Epi-stle  to  the  Romans,'  in  which  he  had  defied  popular 
theology  by  his  free  handling  of  such  questions  as  the  na- 
ture of  Our  Lord's  Atonement  and  the  Eternity  of  Future 
Punishment.  'The  lightest  word  of  a  bishop  is  heavy,' 
and  the  theories  put  forward  in  the  book  had  given  rise  to 
grave  anxiety.  Now,  however,  the  Bishop  of  Natal  was 
preparing  to  go  further  in  his  '  free  handling  of  the  Holy 

H  2 


lOO 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Scripture.'  At  the  end  of  August  1862  Stanley  met  him 
in  London.    'I  saw  Colenso,'  he  writes  to  Professor  Jowett, 

'who  said  (I  think)  that  he  had  sent  his  privately-printed 
book  on  the  Old  Testament  to  you.  If  he  has  not,  bury 
in  silence  all  that  I  say  of  him  or  of  it.  An  excellent  man, 
and  an  able  book ;  but  it  is  so  written  as  to  vex  me  a  good 
deal.  I  have  urged  upon  him,  if  possible,  to  write  it  more 
like  a  defence,  and  less  like  an  attack.  Every  additional 
work  composed  about  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic  ele- 
ments, &c.  &c.,  as  if  to  destroy  the  Bible  —  when  it  really 
should  be  as  if  to  bring  out  a  series  of  interesting  and  in- 
structive facts  in  and  about  the  Bible  —  is  so  much  done  to 
drive  us  further  and  further  from  the  haven  where  we  would 
be.    No  man  ought  ever  to  write  himself  down  as  a  heretic.' 

In  October  1862  the  first  volume  of  Colenso's  work  on 
the  Pentateuch  was  published,  and  in  the  following  No- 
vember Stanley  writes  to  J.  C.  Shairp  upon  the  subject. 
His  attitude  is  the  same  that  he  took  in  the  case  of  'Essays 
and  Reviews,'  and  that  he  consistently  maintained  through- 
out the  agitation  which  Colenso's  book  occasioned. 

'The  case  of  Colenso's  book  appears  to  me  to  be  in  a 
nutshell  —  perfectly  decisive  against  those  who  make  the 
exactness  of  the  numbers  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  essential  to  revela- 
tion, but  almost  entirely  ineffectual  as  to  any  wider  con- 
clusions. In  fact,  it  only  suggests  this  curious  question : 
"  How  far  does  the  Oriental  tendency  to  exaggerate 
numbers  invalidate  the  narrative  in  which  they  occur  " 
I  trust  that  people  will  have  the  good  sense  to  reason  upon 
it  calmly.  I  regret  the  book  extremely;  it  is  just  like  our 
old  friend  Laing  over  again,  with  his  scepticism  about  the 
furniture,  forgetting  the  identity  of  Holyrood. 

'And,  to  me,  anything  which  detracts  even  from  the 
outward  history  is  a  loss.  But  I  cannot  join  in  the  indis- 
criminate outcry  against  an  evidently  honest  and  single- 
minded  religious  man.  (Read  his  preface  and  conclusion.) 
His  book,  they  say,  has  sold  enormously  —  as  if,  forsooth, 
these  questions  were  new !  Meanwhile,  it  will  be  the  carcase 
to  which  all  the  vultures  for  ecclesiastical  advancement  and 


CHAP.  XIX     CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  COLENSO  lOI 


popular  favour  will  be  gathered  together  for  the  next  month 
or  so. 

•  Of  course  the  arithmetic  is  entirely  beyond  me.  But 
I  bow,  as  always,  so  here,  to  the  greatest  living  authority 
in  Jiis  own  sicbject! 

In  the  same  strain  he  wrote  several  letters  to  Bishop 
Colenso  himself,  deprecating  'the  evil  which  the  publication 
of  the  book,  in  its  present  form,  was  likely  to  occasion.' 

Professor  Stanley  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 

(!•) 

'  Without  entering  into  details,  I  will  say  generally, 
that  I  have  nothing  to  say  against  the  numerous  arith- 
metical and  chronological  invalidations  of  the  history  that 
you  adduce.  Whether  any  answer  can  be  made  I  know 
not,  nor  do  I  much  care.  Kennicott  and  Lord  Arthur 
Hervey  have  already  done  so  much  in  this  way  that  a  little 
more  or  less  makes  but  a  slight  difference  in  the  case. 

'  But  I  think  that  there  are  two  or  three  modes  of  argu- 
ment pervading  your  statements  that  ought  to  be  recon- 
sidered. 

'  I.  The  apportionment  of  the  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic 
portions  (after  the  first  four  chapters  of  Genesis)  has  always 
seemed  to  me  very  precarious.  I  do  not  doubt  that  the 
elements  exist ;  but  the  overlaying  of  one  by  the  other,  and 
the  occasional  use  of  the  Jehovistic  by  the  Elohist,  and  of 
the  Elohistic  by  the  Jehovist,  to  my  mind,  and,  I  am  sure, 
to  most  ordinary  readers,  acts  as  a  powerful  damper  of 
interest  in  any  minute  analysis.  I  do  not  say  this  to  dis- 
courage the  examination.  Far  from  it.  The  argument 
from  David's  Psalms  is  so  ingenious  as  to  compel  attention. 
Only  I  would  warn  you,  if  you  wish  to  conciliate  the  belief 
of  your  readers,  not  to  lay  too  much  stress  upon  it.  In  the 
case  of  the  Psalms  (you  will  think  me  enslaved  by  the 
fascination  of  the  great  name)  I  cannot  make  up  my  mind 
to  abandon  at  once  the  dates  of  Ewald ;  for  the  mass  of 
readers,  I  grant  this  last  objection  has  no  force. 

'2.  It  seems  to  me  that  you  argue,  beyond  what  is 
reasonable,  from  the  improbability  of  omissions,  or,  again, 
of  certain  actions.   "  Can  we  conceive  that  David  would  have 


I02 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


left  the  Ark  to  neglect,  &c.  &c.  ?"  Surely  it  might  well  be 
assumed  that  in  a  barbarous  age,  indeed,  in  any  age,  the 
inconsistencies  and  caprices  of  men  are  so  manifold  that  a 
vast  margin  must  be  left  for  them  under  any  hypothesis. 
But  also, 

'  3.  You  seem  to  me  to  transfer  too  much  to  these 
ancient  prophets  and  writers  and  chiefs  our  modern  notions 
of  Divme  Origin.  And  this  I  must  think  a  matter  of  much 
importance.  Our  notion,  or,  rather,  the  modern  Puritanical 
notion  of  Divine  Origin,  is  of  a  preternatural  force  or  voice, 
putting  aside  secondary  agencies,  and  separated  from  those 
agencies  by  an  impassable  gulf.  The  ancient  Oriental,  Bib- 
lical notion  was  of  a  supreme  will  acting  through  those 
agencies,  or,  rather,  being  inseparable  from  them.  Our 
notions  of  Inspiration  and  Divine  communications  insist  on 
absolute  perfection  of  fact,  morals,  doctrine.  The  Biblical 
notion  was  that  Inspiration  was  compatible  with  weakness, 
infirmity,  contradiction. 

'  The  value  of  most  of  the  facts  you  adduce  is  to  show 
(not  so  much  the  unhistorical  or  fictitious  character  of  the 
history  as)  the  utterly  unscriptural  and  unwarrantable 
manner  in  which  we  have  wrested  the  sacred  writings  from 
their  real  intention.  And,  indeed,  in  some  instances,  this 
would  be  acknowledged  by  the  bitterest  of  your  opponents. 

'  4.  Finally,  may  I  protest  against  your  use  of  the  word 
orthodox,  and  against  all  that  your  use  of  it  implies.  I 
may  do  so  without  fear  of  misconstruction,  as  you  have  done 
me  the  honour,  or  at  least  the  favour,  of  ranking  me  with 
the  orthodox.  But  I  am  convinced  that  no  honest  inquirer 
after  truth,  especially  if  he  be  a  clergyman- — -still  more  if  he 
be  a  bishop  —  ought  to  write  himself  down  as  a  heretic.  .  .  . 
"  Orthodox"  has,  or  ought  to  have,  one  of  two  meanings,  i. 
The  legal  sense  (actually  fixed  by  the  ist  of  Elizabeth), 
"That  which  is  in  accordance  with  the  Decrees  of  the  P'our 
first  Councils."  Nothing  that  you  have  said  in  any  way  con- 
travenes these.  Indeed,  you  agree  much  more  with  these 
Decrees,  both  by  omission  and  commission,  than  most  of  your 
opponents.  2.  The  moral  sense  of  "True,"  or  "Scriptural." 
To  give  up  this  is  to  give  up  your  whole  position.  You 
are  not  attacking  the  Bible ;  you  are  endeavouring  to  make 
out  from  it  what  it  says  of  itself.  You  are  not  attacking 
the  Christian  truth  ;  you  are  endeavouring  to  bring  it  out 


CHAP.  XIX     CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  COLENSO  103 


in  its  true  Scriptural  character,  apart  from  the  unscriptural, 
uncatholic  theories  by  which  it  and  the  Bible  have  been 
overlaid.  If  you  are  right,  you  are  not  less,  but  more, 
orthodox  than  Hengstenberg,  than  Pusey,  than  myself.' 

Professor  Stanley  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 
(2.) 

'  I  write  abruptly  and  critically.  But  do  not  suppose 
me  insensible  either  to  the  vast  labour  or  the  painful 
efforts  which  this  work  must  have  cost  you.  It  is  my 
full  consciousness  of  this  which  makes  me  so  anxious 
that  no  indiscretion  of  expression  or  exaggeration  of  argu- 
ment should  lead  off  the  public  scent  from  your  real  meaning 
and  real  intention. 

'  I  must,  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  repeat  briefly  what 
my  strong  feeling  is  about  your  book,  and  then  you  can 
judge  how  far  my  agreement  or  disagreement  goes. 

*(l)  I  consider  that,  in  principle,  your  argument  about 
the  numbers,  genealogies,  Jehovistic  orElohistic  documents, 
&c.,  are  what  have  been  stated  many  times  before,  and  are 
of  very  slight  importance,  except  as  bearing  on  the  question 
of  the  literal  inspiration,  as  it  is  called,  of  the  sacred  text. 

'  (2)  I  consider  that  anyone  is  quite  free  to  make  any 
conjectures  about  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  and 
that  on  this  subject,  as  on  that  of  the  numbers,  &c.,  no  one 
view  has  a  right  to  claim  more  reputation  for  orthodoxy 
than  another.  If  Samuel  wrote  it,  I  should  be  very  glad  to 
know  that  it  was  written  by  so  great  a  prophet,  and  I  con- 
sider that  all  such  names  as  "forger,"  &c.,  as  applied  to  him, 
or  whoever  was  the  author  or  compiler,  are  quite  misplaced. 

'  (3)  I  consider  that  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis  do  not 
claim  to  be,  and  are  not,  historical  in  the  same  sense  as  the 
later  historical  books.  But  that  from  the  time  of  Abraham 
downwards  there  is  a  distinct,  though  not  exclusively 
historical,  narrative,  is  what  I  have  always  maintained,  and 
what  I  have  set  forth  both  in  my  book  on  Palestine,  (which 
you  have  opposed  on  that  very  account),  and  in  my  forth- 
coming lectures.  All  such  expressions  as  Jictitiojis  and  the 
like  appear  to  me  totally  erroneous  and  misleading. 

'But  (4),  most  of  all,  what  I  thought  I  had  urged  again 
and  again,  both  in  conversation  and  letters,  is,  that  I  regard 


I04 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


the  whole  plan  of  your  book  as  a  mistake.  My  object  for 
twenty  years,  and  my  object  in  my  forthcoming  book,  is  to 
draw  forth  the  inestimable  treasures  of  the  Old  Testament, 
both  historically,  geographically,  morally,  and  spiritually. 
To  fix  the  public  attention  on  the  mere  defects  of  structure 
and  detail  is,  to  my  mind,  to  lead  off  the  public  mind  on  a 
false  scent  and  to  a  false  issue.' 

Professor  Stanley  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal. 
(3-) 

'  I  am  convinced  that  this  succession  of  negative  attacks 
on  the  structure  of  the  Old  Testament  completely  leads  off 
the  public  mind  on  a  false  scent.  It  is  because  Ewald's 
book  has  such  a  totally  different  object  that  I  so  greatly 
admire  and  have  so  much  profited  by  it.  Of  course,  in 
saying  this  I  do  not  mean  to  disparage  any  researches  or 
inquiries,  and  yours  in  particular  seem  to  me  fully  within 
the  scope  of  the  Church  and  of  the  Bible.  But  in  them- 
selves they  appear  to  me  of  an  importance  so  secondary  to 
that  of  a  just  appreciation  of  the  Old  Testament  itself,  that 
I  cannot  think  the  good  of  their  publication  at  all  com- 
mensurate with  the  amount  of  alarm  and  misapprehension 
which  they  produce. 

'  There  was  a  pamphlet  written  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  at 
the  time  of  the  Free  Church  controversy  of  which  I  know 
nothing  but  the  title ;  but  that  has  always  seemed  to  me 
very  instructive,  and  very  applicable  to  our  present  circum- 
stances : —  "Be  not  Martyrs  by  Mistake''  ' 

Throughout  his  correspondence  with  Colenso  Stanley 
had  strongly  insisted  upon  the  evils  which,  in  his  opinion, 
the  Bishop's  negative  criticism  on  the  Pentateuch  must 
necessarily  occasion.  His  forebodings  were  verified  sooner 
than  he  expected,  and  in  a  direction  which  he  had  not  an- 
ticipated. In  i860,  Frederick  Maurice  had  been  appointed 
by  the  Crown  to  the  incumbency  of  St.  Peter's,  Vere  Street, 
and,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  'Record,'  had  been 
instituted  by  the  Bishop  of  London.  The  assaults  of  his 
theological  opponents,  and  the  recent  decisions  of  Dr. 


CHAP.  XIX  UNEASINESS  OF  MAURICE 


105 


Lushington  in  the  cases  of  Mr.  Heath  and  Mr.  Wilson,  had, 
however,  produced  such  an  effect  on  the  sensitive  nature 
of  the  new  incumbent  that  he  contemplated  the  resignation 
of  St.  Peter's.  In  almost  the  last  letter  which  Stanley 
wrote  before  his  departure  for  his  second  Eastern  tour,  he 
had  implored  Maurice  to  postpone  the  final  decision  till  his 
return.  The  appeal  succeeded.  Stanley  left  England  with 
the  promise  that  no  decisive  step  should  be  taken  in  his 
absence.  'The  thought,'  he  says,  'of  your  retirement  was 
like  a  sword.'  But  in  September  1862  the  proposed  pub- 
lication of  Colenso's  work  on  the  Pentateuch  renewed  and 
increased  Maurice's  uneasiness.^  On  October  13th  he  placed 
his  resignation  in  the  hands  of  Bishop  Tait,  believing  that 
he  would  be  better  able  to  resist  Colenso's  destructive 
theories  if  he  raised  himself,  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  emolu- 
ments, beyond  the  possible  suspicion  of  worldly  motives. 

Bishop  Tait  at  once  appealed  to  Stanley  to  use  his  per- 
sonal influence  with  Maurice  to  persuade  him  to  withdraw 
his  proffered  resignation.  Stanley's  efforts  proved  unavail- 
ing. '  I  have  been,'  he  writes  to  the  Bishop  on  October 
17th,  1862,*  'to  see  him  (Maurice)  to-day,  but  I  find  (and 
all  his  family  and  his  friends  say)  that,  in  spite  of  all  their 
arguments,  his  decision  is  irrevocable.'  Failing  to  shake 
Maurice's  resolution,  he  appealed  to  Colenso  to  postpone 
the  publication  of  his  book. 

'  I  do  not  forget  that  the  Truth,  of  which  you  are  in 
search,  is  "dearer  than  Plato,  than  Socrates,"  —  than  any 
friend,  however  precious  to  you  or  to  the  Church.  But  I 
ask  this  favour  of  you,  not  only  in  behalf  of  Maurice,  but 
in  behalf  of  the  work  in  which  you  are  engaged. 

'  I  need  not  repeat  what  I  have  said  before,  that  I  depre- 
cate your  mode  of  approaching  the  subject,  and  that  from 
many,  perhaps,  of  the  conclusions  to  which  your  researches 

*  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice,  vol.  ii.  chap.  xiii.  pp.  421-34. 

*  Life  of  Archbishop  Tait,  vol.  i.  p.  513. 


io6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


1862 


have  led  you  I  should  dissent.  But  I  know  that  yours  is  a 
work  of  honest  research,  and,  agreeing  or  disagreeing,  I 
cannot  but  desire,  in  common  with  all  lovers  of  truth  and 
(I  may  add  for  myself)  of  the  history  of  the  Old  Testament, 
that  such  researches  should  be  considered  on  their  own 
merits,  and  their  own  merits  alone.  Your  work,  appearing 
in  the  midst  of  the  storm  of  Maurice's  resignation,  would 
be  doomed  to  certain  misconstruction,  and  would  be  con- 
demned before  it  could  be  heard. 

'  On  this  ground,  therefore,  as  well  as  on  the  more 
general  grounds  of  the  peace  of  the  Church,  and  the  more 
special  grounds  of  thus  hoping  to  retain  in  the  service  of 
the  Church  a  man  to  whom  you  and  I,  and  so  many  more, 
owe  so  much,  I  venture  to  make  this  appeal  to  your  gener- 
osity and  courage,  which  have  never,  I  ibelieve,  been  found 
wanting  before,  and  which,  I  trust,  may  enable  you  to 
respond,  even  at  this  last  hour,  to  an  entreaty  which,  God 
knows,  has  no  other  motive  than  the  desire  to  prevent 
a  deplorable  and  wide-spreading  misfortune,  public  and 
private.' 

Stanley's  appeal  was  successful.  Bishop  Colenso  at 
once  consented  to  do  his  utmost  to  delay  the  publication 
of  the  first  part  of  his  work  on  '  The  Pentateuch  and  the 
Book  of  Joshua.'  At  the  same  time,  the  Bishop  of  London 
refused  to  accept  Maurice's  resignation  of  his  living.  By 
these  and  other  means  Maurice  was  induced  to  remain  in 
his  incumbency. 

Writing  to  his  '  dearest  Auntie '  (Mrs.  Augustus  Hare), 
Stanley  rejoices  in 

'this  unexpected  deliverance  from  a  calamity  so  great  as 
Maurice's  retirement  would  have  been. 

'That  the  Bishop  of  London  should  have  had  the  firm- 
ness to  refuse  the  resignation  (it  is,  as  you  may  remember, 
what  my  dear  father  did  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Wodehouse) 
reflects  great  credit  on  the  Bishop ;  and  that  Maurice 
should  have  had  the  courage  to  withdraw  at  the  last  mo- 
ment from  his  untenable  position  reflects  great  credit  on 
him  also. 

'  The  Bishop  of  Natal,  also,  has  behaved  extremely 


CHAP.  XIX    STANLEY'S  VIEWS  ON  INSPIRATION  107 


well,  for  as  soon  as  he  heard  (which  he  only  did  on  last 
Saturday  night)  that  the  publication  of  his  book  was  one 
of  the  grounds  of  Maurice's  retirement,  he  immediately 
proposed  to  withdraw  it,  and  would  have  done  so,  had  it 
not  been  already  in  the  hands  of  the  booksellers.' 

Relieved  from  a  great  dread,  Stanley  returned  with  a 
lighter  heart  to  those  professorial  duties  in  which  he  could 
'at  times  forget  what  has  made  all  else,  and  even  these,  so 
fiat  and  unprofitable.'  He  was  immersed  in  literary  work. 
At  the  moment  when  Colenso's  volume  was  announced  for 
publication  he  was  preparing  for  the  press  two  books 
which  unconsciously  replied,  as  it  were,  to  the  questions 
raised  by  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  The  first  was  a  volume  of 
three  sermons  on  'The  Bible:  its  Form  and  its  Substance'  ;^ 
the  second  contained  his  'Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church'^ 
down  to  the  establishment  of  the  monarchy  under  the 
superintendence  of  Samuel. 

In  'The  Bible:  its  Form  and  its  Substance,'  Stanley 
discusses  the  general  question  of  Inspiration.  The  first 
two  sermons  had  been  preached  in  his  mother's  hearing ; 
the  last  was  delivered  in  October  1862.  'How  chansred 
the  whole  congregation  seemed  to  be  by  the  consciousness 
that  that  one  listener  was  absent.'  The  three  discourses 
form  a  commentary  on  the  two  opening  verses  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  In  discussing  the  discrepancies 
between  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  he  had  quoted 
this  passage,  and  in  a  subsequent  continuance  of  the  same 
discussion  the  passage  was  similarly  used  by  the  Archbishop 
and  Metropolitan  of  Moscow,  the  aged  Philaret.  Stanley 
protests  against  the  theory  of  an  uniform  and  equal  in- 
spiration of  every  word  and  letter  of  the  Bible.    Such  a 

^  The  Bible  :  its  Form  and  its  Substance.  Three  sermons  preached  before 
the  University  of  Oxford.    Oxford,  1862. 

'^Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish  Church.  Part  I.,  'Abraham  to 
Samuel.'    London,  1862. 


I08  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1862 

theory  he  holds  to  be  a  modern  introduction  into  Christian 
theology.  So  far  as  Colenso's  work  undermined  this  late 
hypothesis,  he  welcomes  the  Bishop's  inquiry  as  useful. 
But,  in  Stanley's  opinion,  the  discovery  of  discrepancies, 
contradictions,  or  errors  need  not,  and  should  not,  shake 
men's  faith  in  the  Divine  influence  which  pervades  the 
sacred  volume.  While  he  concedes  that  the  Bible  is  not 
inspired  in  such  a  sense  as  to  preclude  human  imperfection, 
he  pleads  earnestly  for  the  belief  that  it  yet  is  an  inspired 
book,  divinely  framed  and  divinely  superintended.  Men  are 
not  compelled  to  surrender  their  faith  that  *  God  spake '  in 
the  Bible  '  by  the  prophets  and  by  His  Son '  because,  at 
the  same  time,  they  recognise  that  God  spake  '  at  sundry 
times  and  in  divers  manners.' 

In  the  spirit  of  these  sermons  Stanley  approaches  Jewish 
history.  Renan  and  Ewald  saw  in  the  Bible  the  history  of 
the  gradual  unfolding  of  the  highest  religious  ideas.  Stanley 
finds  in  it  more  than  this  :  he  finds  the  history  of  the 
gradual  progress  of  the  true  religion.  He  holds  that 
Jewish  history  is  the  ordained  preparation  for  a  religion 
which  is  divine,  that  the  Christian  revelation  is  the  point  to 
which  the  whole  series  of  events  recorded  in  the  Old 
Testament  was  providentially  arranged  to  lead,  and  that 
at  certain  crises  in  the  course  of  these  events  it  is  possible 
to  trace  the  manifestation  of  Divine  action.  The  Bible  is 
sacred  history.  It  is  the  history  of  a  Church.  It  is  also 
the  history  of  a  people,  and  a  real  history.  It  is  a  field  on 
which  the  light  of  common  day  must  be  allowed  to  fall ;  it 
is  not  a  spot  too  sacred  for  the  sun  to  shine  upon.  It  is  a 
history  to  be  judged  with  the  same  freedom  as  any  other 
record  of  human  character  and  action,  a  history  to  be 
explained  by  the  same  critical  processes,  to  be  elucidated 
by  more  accurate  interpretation,  to  be  illustrated  by  widen- 
ing knowledge.    Stanley  accepts  the  critical  and  historical 


CHAP.  XIX    'LECTURES  ON  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH'  IO9 


mode  of  dealing  with  the  Bible ;  he  accepts  also  the 
religious  and  historical  method.  He  employs  both  without 
attempting  their  reconciliation. 

Stanley  held  that  the  question  whether  the  Pentateuch 
could  or  could  not  be  proved  to  belong  to  a  later  date  than 
that  generally  assigned  ought  not  to  affect  the  convictions  of 
Christians.  Seeking  to  avoid  rather  than  to  solve  perplexed 
questions  of  controversy,  anxious  to  dwell  on  features  which 
were  not  the  subjects  of  dispute,  he  entered  into  no  discus- 
sion of  the  structure  or  the  composition  of  the  Mosaic 
books.  Between  the  corrosive  criticism  of  one  school  and 
the  intolerant  dogmatism  of  another  he  finds  a  free  soil, 
from  which  a  rich  harvest  may  be  raised.  His  method  is 
essentially  constructive  and  synthetical.  In  its  application 
it  is  rather  the  wisdom  of  love  than  the  love  of  wisdom 
which  predominates.  Analysts  might  discover  that  the 
old  facts  of  the  Bible  had  been  raised  to  a  fabulous  power. 
But  beneath  the  accidents  Stanley  found  eternal  verities, 
which  illuminated  the  past,  interpreted  the  present,  and 
predicted  the  future.  It  was  his  object,  as  he  says  himself, 
'  to  draw  out  the  inestimable  treasures  of  the  Old  Testament, 
both  historically,  geographically,  morally,  and  spiritually.' 
All  the  charm  and  grace  of  his  style  are  devoted  to  the 
picturesque  illustration  of  the  Scriptural  narrative.  He 
clothes  with  new  life  and  meaning  the  story  of  the  Patriarchs, 
or  of  Israel  in  Egypt.  He  paints,  with  exquisite  feeling 
and  with  the  inward  eye  of  a  poet,  the  scenery  of  Sinai 
and  the  march  through  the  Wilderness.  He  traces  the  effect 
of  the  wandering  on  the  ritual  and  character  of  the  Israel- 
itish  race,  and  demonstrates,  whether  Moses  was  or  was  not 
the  chronicler,  the  substantial  reality  of  the  facts.  He  gives 
to  portions  of  the  Jewish  history  which  before  were  dim, 
obscure,  confused — as,  for  instance,  the  period  of  the  Judges 
—  a  new  clearness,  afresh  interest,  and  a  deeper  significance. 


I  lO 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


The  volume  of  Lectures  was,  moreover,  prepared  for  the 
press  under  the  influence  of  his  recent  loss.  To  remove 
from  it,  as  far  as  he  could,  all  jarring  notes  was  a  task 
congenial  to  the  feelings  that  occupied  his  mind.  It  is 
dedicated  to  the  memory  of  his  mother,  'by  whose  firm 
faith,  calm  wisdom,  and  tender  sympathy  these  and  all 
other  labours  have  for  years  been  sustained  and  cheered.' 
'I  had  a  sort  of  shrinking,'  he  writes  to  Mrs.  A.  Hare, 

'from  mixing  up  her  dear  memory  with  anything  that  was 
likely  to  breed  disputation.  Still,  I  knew  what  she  thought 
of  the  book,  and  it  was  the  only  way  of  expressing  —  oh  ! 
how  inadequately  —  what  she  has  been  to  me,  and  how 
"faltering  will  be  the  steps"  (as  the  poor  Queen  says  in 
the  preface  to  the  Prince's  speeches)  without  her  on  the 
way  that  lies  before  me.  Also,  it  is  my  hope  that  in  the 
volume  itself  there  is  enough  to  strengthen  and  cheer  (I 
am  sure  that  is  my  humble  desire),  without  suggesting 
quarrels  or  doubts.' 

The  Lectures,  which  were  published  in  1862,  deal  with 
the  first  period  of  Jewish  history  —  the  period  that  closes 
with  the  death  of  Samuel  and  the  establishment  of  the 
Monarchy  —  the  time  when  the  old  theocracy,  with  its 
sublime  ideals  and  frequent  aberrations  in  practice,  gave 
place  to  that  strong  system  of  government  which  nurtured 
in  the  Jewish  race  expectations  of  the  kingly  Messiah  who 
should  fulfil  their  highest  aspirations. 

Starting  with  the  age  of  the  Patriarchs  and  the  call  of 
Abraham,  Stanley  found  the  ground  already  prepared  for 
him  by  Ewald.  The  comparison  which  he  suggests  between 
the  work  of  Ewald  and  of  Niebuhr,  and  between  the 
methods  of  historical  and  critical  investigation  which  the 
two  great  German  scholars  applied  to  Jewish  and  Roman 
history,  may  perhaps  be  extended  to  himself  and  Dr. 
Arnold.  What  Niebuhr  was  to  Arnold,  that  Ewald  was  to 
Stanley.    If  Ewald  was  a  second  Niebuhr  in  his  acuteness, 


CHAP.  XIX    'LECTURES  ON  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH'  III 


his  learning,  his  enthusiasm,  and,  it  must  be  added,  in  his 
rashness  and  the  positiveness  of  his  conclusions,  Stanley's 
'  Lectures  on  Jewish  History,'  in  their  general  spirit,  might 
well  be  compared  to  Arnold's  '  Chapters  on  early  Roman 
History. '  Both  Arnold  and  Stanley  possessed  qualifications 
which,  with  greater  leisure  and  greater  specialisation,  might 
have  made  either  a  great  historian.  In  both  there  is  the  same 
largeness  of  view,  the  same  sense  of  the  unity  and  continuity 
of  history,  the  same  appreciation  of  the  relations  between 
past  and  present,  the  same  conviction  of  the  similarity  of 
human  nature  in  one  age  and  country  to  human  nature  in 
another.  In  both,  again,  there  is,  consequently,  the  same  de- 
termination to  break  down  the  conventional  and  imaginary 
barriers  between  ancient  and  modern  history,  and  to  show 
that  ancient  society  was  at  bottom  governed  by  the  same 
laws  which  are  obeyed  by  society  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

Stanley  owes  much  of  his  material  to  Ewald.  He  also 
adds  much  that  was  the  result  of  his  own  study,  and  he 
brings  to  his  work  powers  that  were  peculiarly  his  own. 

The  first  part  of  his  '  Lectures  on  Jewish  History '  con- 
tains little  or  nothing  that  is  new,  unless  it  be  the  account 
of  Machpelah.  It  is  a  companion  volume  to  '  Sinai  and 
Palestine,'  and  it  is  on  the  geographical  side  that  his  work 
is  most  original.  But  this  want  of  novelty  can  scarcely  be 
regarded  as  a  fault,  since  the  object  is  rather  to  illustrate 
the  salient  points  and  leading  characters  in  the  growth  of 
the  Jewish  people  than  to  break  new  ground  or  to  pro- 
mote Biblical  science.  Nor,  again,  are  the  lectures  remark- 
able for  analytical  sagacity,  critical  acuteness,  or  logical 
power.  But  the  special  line  that  Stanley  chose  afforded 
little  scope  for  the  display  of  these  qualities,  even  had  they 
been  at  his  command.  He  kept  his  object  too  steadily 
before  him,  and  was  too  conscious  of  his  own  mental 
deficiencies,  to  wander  into  fields  which  belong  to  other 


112 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


purposes  and  to  other  minds.  So  far,  the  defects  which 
may  be  discovered  in  the  book  are  inseparable  from  its 
design.  Other,  more  positive,  blemishes  were  due  to  the 
manner  of  its  composition.  The  diffuseness  of  some  of  the 
chapters  belongs  to  the  oral  form  of  their  original  delivery 
as  lectures ;  the  air  of  haste  and  want  of  finish,  by 
which  this,  as  well  as  his  other  work,  is  sometimes  char- 
acterised, result  from  his  habit  of  rapid  writing ;  the 
tendency  to  make  rhetorical  points,  or  to  sacrifice  sober 
inquiry  to  the  enforcement  of  moral  lessons,  is  the  fault  of 
a  sermon-writer,  and  in  this  case  springs  directly  from  the 
delivery  of  some  portions  of  the  work  from  the  pulpit ; 
the  scantiness  of  detail  which  is  occasionally  visible,  and  the 
superabundance  of  illustration  that  overlays  the  gravity  and 
reticence  of  the  Bible,  are  blemishes  which  only  the  most 
fastidious  taste  can  eradicate  from  picturesque  historical 
writing.  The  most  serious  defect  is  the  want  of  critical 
power,  which  shows  itself  in  various  ways  —  in  exaggera- 
tions, in  the  excessive  laudation  of  Ewald,  and  in  the 
rashness  which,  for  instance,  attempts  a  new  version  of 
Deborah's  song,  in  spite  of  an  acknowledged  deficiency  in 
Hebrew  scholarship. 

Defects,  both  positive  and  negative,  may  be  alleged 
against  Stanley's  '  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church ' ;  errors 
and  inaccuracies  may  be  discovered  in  his  pages.  But  his 
largeness  of  view,  his  varied  learning,  his  happy  sense  of 
historical  analogy,  his  dramatic  feeling,  his  picturesque 
imagination,  his  human-heartedness,  enthusiasm  and 
earnestness,  enabled  him  to  paint  the  real  life,  character, 
and  surroundings  of  the  actors  in  Jewish  history  with  a 
vividness,  a  richness,  and  a  vitality  that  were  never  before 
equalled,  and  have  never  been  surpassed.  He  threw  an 
unfailing  geniality  and  freshness  into  his  work,  until  the 
reader  is  carried  away  by  his  enthusiasm. 


CHAP.  XIX    'LECTURES  ON  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH'  II3 


Writing  in  unbroken  sympathy  with  the  scenes  and 
persons  he  describes,  throwing  himself  back  into  the  past 
with  the  vigour  of  a  contemporary  actor,  painting  his  his- 
torical and  geographical  pictures  with  the  hand  of  a  mas- 
ter vividly  impressed  with  a  sense  of  the  continuity  of 
history,  he  did  more  than  any  other  English  scholar  to 
give  living  human  interest  to  the  Biblical  narrative. 

His  keen  sense  of  the  relations  of  past  and  present  is 
one  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  his  lectures  ; 
another,  is  the  vividness  of  his  historical  imagination ;  a 
third,  is  the  vigour  and  vitality  of  his  historical  or  geo- 
graphical pictures. 

Everywhere  the  parallel  between  the  past  and  the 
present  is  before  his  mind.  In  the  earliest  times  he  finds 
counterparts  with  modern  features.  He  forces  upon  our 
notice  the  thought  that  the  actors  in  the  Bible  were  men 
of  like  passions  with  ourselves,  and  the  actions  in  which 
their  feelings  found  expression  were  substantially  the  same, 
though  accidentally  different.  No  detail  is  too  small  for  his 
notice,  because  nothing  is  wholly  unrelated  or  disconnected 
to  one  who  possesses  Stanley's  power  of  detecting  remote 
analogies  or  bringing  to  the  light  hidden  resemblances. 

And  this  sense  of  the  continuity  of  history  not  only 
gives  breath  to  his  treatment  of  the  Biblical  narrative : 
it  also,  in  his  skilful  hands,  becomes  a  valuable  instrument 
in  the  vivid  expression  of  his  imaginative  insight  into  the 
character  and  surroundings  of  ancient  history.  The  power 
with  which  Stanley  realises  to  himself  scenes,  times,  or 
personages  that  have  become  almost  mythical  from  too 
great  or  too  little  familiarity,  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
of  his  gifts  as  an  historian.  His  wide  historical  knowl- 
edge and  his  warm  sympathies,  his  insatiable  curiosity  for 
details,  his  love  of  studying  human  character,  were  com- 
bined with  an  active  imagination,  an  eye  which  was  poeti- 
VOL.  II  I 


114 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1862 


cal  in  the  keenness  of  its  penetration,  and  a  dramatic 
feeling  which  seized  intuitively  upon  the  salient  features. 
The  same  qualities  were  at  work  when  he  visited  any 
historical  scene.  As  he  possessed  much  of  the  poet's 
insight  into  character,  so  also  he  possessed  the  inward  eye 
of  the  painter,  which  calls  up  groups,  and  combines,  in 
their  original  colour  and  freshness,  the  details  which  pass 
before  other  men's  vision  without  making  any  impression. 

The  figure  or  the  scene  which  he  thus  realised  to  him- 
self he  brought  before  his  readers  with  a  vividness  pecul- 
iar to  himself.  In  his  own  life  he  always  carried  about 
with  him  a  sense  that  he  was  moving  through  history  and 
taking  a  part  in  its  course.  This  feeling  was  not  due  to 
vanity  ;  for  he  looked  upon  the  humblest  of  his  contem- 
poraries in  the  same  light,  and  repeated  their  sayings  and 
doings  with  the  same  eagerness  with  which  other  men 
might  quote  the  words  or  the  actions  of  some  world-re- 
nowned figure.  But  the  habitual  practice  of  thus  repre- 
senting to  himself  contemporary  history  was  one  great 
secret  of  the  freshness  with  which  he  painted  the  past. 
He  spared  no  pains  to  bring  home  to  his  readers  in  the 
most  familiar  form  the  idea  that  he  wished  to  convey. 
When,  for  instance,  he  lectures  at  Edinburgh  on  Solomon, 
he  is  careful  to  inquire  beforehand  whether  he  can  be 
told  of  any  building  in  the  city  or  in  the  neighbourhood 
which  corresponds  to  any  of  the  dimensions  of  the 
Temple.  Similarly,  in  the  '  Lectures  on  the  Jewish 
Church,'  and  in  all  his  historical  writings,  suggestive 
parallels,  comparisons,  and  analogies  between  ancient  and 
modern  men,  epochs,  or  scenes,  are  employed  to  bring  out 
the  reality  of  the  Old  World,  and  to  impart  to  its  inhabi- 
tants the  roundness  and  substance  of  contemporary  life. 

In  the  preparation  of  his  lectures  for  the  press  Stanley 
was  reminded  at  every  page  of  his  mother,  to  whose  criti- 


CHAP.  XIX 


'SUCCESS  OF  THE  LECTURES' 


cism  they  had  been  submitted  before  deUvery.  When  the 
book  itself  appeared,  its  reception  both  by  the  pubUc  and 
by  friends  revived  in  all  its  keenness  the  pain  of  his  loss. 
Its  success  was  robbed  of  its  charm  by  the  loss  of  her  to 
whom  it  would  have  been  most  dear.  His  mother's  death 
seemed  to  have  left  a  blank  in  his  life  which  nothing  could 
supply.    As  each  letter  arrived,  it  recalled  to  his  mind 

'  the  eager  expectation  with  which  those  letters  were  ex- 
pected in  former  days,  when,  at  each  successive  birth  of  my 
progeny,  my  dearest  mother  looked  out  for  any  note  of  ap- 
probation or  disapprobation  as  the  one  event  of  the  day. 
That  is  gone  for  ever.  No  one  can  ever  again  fill  that  place 
for  me.  But  still  these  kind  tokens  seem  to  me  like  echoes 
or  reverberations  of  her  voice,  and  as  such  I  gladly  welcome 
them.  She  had  read  everything  in  the  book  (though  not 
quite  in  its  revised  state)  except  the  appendices,  the  notes, 
and  the  preface  and  introduction.  These  last  were  written 
in  jottings  during  my  voyage  from  Marseilles  to  Alexan- 
dria ;  and  I  had  written  to  tell  her  of  their  completion  in 
the  letters  which  never  reached  her.' 

Inquiries  into  the  authorship  of  the  books  of  the  Bible, 
investigations  of  the  geology,  natural  history,  and  astronomy 
of  the  sacred  narrative,  and  all  the  numerous  theories  of 
inspiration  were,  Stanley  believed,  legitimate  subjects  of 
discussion,  because  upon  them  the  Articles  and  the  Liturgy 
expressed  no  opinion.  He  felt  that  on  all  these  points,  as 
he  says  in  the  brief  note  on  Colenso's  volume  appended  to 
his  Lectures,  'the  cause  of  religion  has  nothing  to  lose,  and 
evefything  to  gain,  by  free  inquiry.'  But  in  his  '  Lectures 
on  the  Jewish  Church '  he  had,  for  various  reasons,  en- 
deavoured to  avoid  the  controversies  which,  during  the  last 
three  years,  so  vehemently  agitated  the  Church  on  questions 
of  Biblical  criticism  and  the  relations  of  theology  to  science 

He  well  knew  that  the  course  v/hich  he  adopted  would 
rather  alienate  than  attract  support,  and  that  his  book,  to 
use  his  words  to  Henry  Bunsen,  would  be  '  condemned  by 


Il6  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1863 

the  advanced  liberals  as  not  going  far  enough,  while  those 
who  are  reputed  "  orthodox"  will  try  to  suppress  it.'  But 
though  his  own  lectures  avoided  points  of  contemporary 
controversy,  he  could  not  stand  aloof  from  the  agitation  for 
the  relaxation  or  increased  stringency  of  the  terms  of  sub- 
cription,  to  which  recent  discussions  were  giving  vital  im- 
portance. In  the  question  of  legal  forms  of  declaration  was 
involved  one  of  his  two  leading  ideas  in  ecclesiastical  poli- 
tics. Without  latitude  of  subscription  his  dream  of  a  com- 
prehensive National  Church,  finding  room  in  her  bosom  for 
all  Christian  people,  was  impossible  of  fulfilment. 

Stanley's  interest  in  the  question  of  subscription  be- 
longed to  an  older  date  than  the  publication  of  '  Essays 
and  Reviews,'  or  the  appearance  of  Colenso's  criticisms  on 
the  Pentateuch.  The  attitude  which  he  throughout  main- 
tained on  the  subject  is  a  remarkable  proof  that  his  opinions 
were  not  too  fluid  for  consistency.  As  an  undergraduate 
he  had  thrown  himself  warmly  into  the  cause  of  Dr. 
Hampden,  against  those  who  desired  to  suspend  or  censure 
the  Professor  for  heresy."  The  scruples  respecting  the 
Athanasian  Creed,  which  tormented  him  at  the  time  of  his 
Ordination,^  enabled  him  to  appreciate  the  similar  scruples 
of  others. 

But  his  sympathies  were  also  extended  to  those  from 
whom  he  differed.  In  1840  he  had  joined  in  the  petition,^ 
presented  to  the  House  of  Lords  by  Archbishop  Whately, 
which  pleaded  for  a  latitude  of  subscription  in  favour  of 
opinions  opposed  to  his  own.  Writing  in  that  year  to 
Canon  Wodehouse,  he  took  up  a  position  from  which  he 
never  receded : 

'  I  confine  myself  exclusively  to  the  grievance  of  sub- 
scription.   This  I  have  well  considered  —  as  well,  perhaps,  as 

Vol.  i.  Chap.  VI.  8  Vol.  i.  Chap.  VII. 

»  Vol.  i.  Chap.  VIII. 


CHAP.  XIX        QUESTION  OF  SUBSCRIPTION 


117 


I  ever  shall  —  and  have  been  called  to  the  consideration  of 
it  by  such  a  call  as  can  never  occur  again  [his  Ordination]. 
But  the  questions  whether  Nevvmanism  is  true  or  false, 
whether  the  Baptismal  or  Ordination  services,  or  even  the 
damnatory  clauses  themselves,  are  wrong,  are  all  points  on 
which  I  do  not  think  I  have  any  business  to  write  at  present. 
And  therefore  I  feel  convinced  that  the  only  way  of  keep- 
ing quite  straight  is  to  limit  myself  strictly  to  my  own 
field,  viz.,  that  the  present  subscription  is  a  grievance.' 

He  had  voted  against  every  stage  of  the  measures  by 
which  the  terms  of  subscription  were  used  as  the  instru- 
ment to  remove  Dr.  Pusey  and  his  friends  from  their 
academical  position.  He  had  procured,  at  the  cost  of  con- 
siderable labour,  the  opinion  of  two  eminent  lawyers 
against  the  imposition  of  the  test  which  it  was  proposed 
to  impose  with  the  same  object.  He  had  himself  signed 
and  procured  signatures  for  the  Address  of  Thanks  to  the 
Proctors  for  their  firmness  in  defeating  the  attempt  to 
procure  the  same  result  by  the  condemnation  of  '  Tract 
90.'  In  1850  he  had  warmly  welcomed  the  latitude  of 
opinion  which  was  conceded  to  the  Evangelicals  by  the 
decision  of  the  Privy  Council  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Gorham. 
At  the  time  of  the  University  Commission  he  bad  used 
strenuous  efforts  to  procure  the  relaxation  of  terms  which 
were  then  used  as  weapons  against  the  followers  of  Dr. 
Pusey.  He  had  forcibly  pleaded  against  the  legal  pro- 
ceedings by  which  it  was  sought  to  drive  from  the  Church 
the  authors  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews.'  He  had  found,  from 
recent  experience  in  the  case  of  the  Greek  Professorship 
at  Oxford,  that  the  latitude  of  interpretation  for  which  he 
pleaded  was  not  conceded  to  theological  opponents,  even 
by  those  who  had  most  suffered  by  a  narrow  construction. 
He  had  learned  that  no  considerations  of  faithful  services 
struck  the  weapons  furnished  by  the  enforcement  of  the 

1"  Vol.  i.  Chap.  IX.  11  Vol.  i.  Chap.  X. 


Il8  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1863 

existing  terms  of  subscription  from  the  hands  of  con- 
tending parties  in  ecclesiastical  politics.  If  other  proofs 
were  wanting  of  the  futility  of  relying  on  mutual  tolerance, 
they  were  supplied  by  the  prosecution  of  Professor  Jowett 
which  was  commenced,  at  the  end  of  1862,  by  '  Pusey, 
Heurtley,  and  Ogilvie  —  Heurtley  and  Ogilvie  having  both 
in  former  times  pronounced  judicially  that  Pusey's  doc- 
trines were  contrary  to  the  Articles.' 

Few  men  in  England  had,  therefore,  a  better  right 
to  be  heard  on  the  question  of  subscription  than  Stanley. 
\vy  1862  the  subject  was  forced  upon  public  attention  by 
recent  controversies.  The  demand  for  the  relaxation  of 
the  forms  of  declaration  required  by  the  law  of  the  land 
was  met  by  a  corresponding  demand  for  increased 
stringency.  Bishop  Tait,  in  his  second  diocesan  Charge 
(1862),  boldly  declared  himself  in  favour  of  a  'generous 
and  confiding  policy'  as  'the  best  and  most  Christian' 
attitude.  Lord  Ebury  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  Mr. 
Dodson  in  the  Lower  House,  became  the  mouthpieces  of 
those  who  demanded  a  simplification  and  relaxation  in  the 
terms  of  subscription.  Early  in  1863  Stanley  was  invited 
to  meet  Mr.  Gladstone  at  the  Duchess  of  Sutherland's,  to 
discuss  the  subject  with  him. 

'When  I  arrived  there  were  only  the  two  little  Glad- 
stone boys  there  —  at  tea — Herbert  and  Henry  —  good 
little  creatures.  They  were  in  some  alarm  at  having 
dropped  some  jam  into  the  crystalline  butter-bowl.  But 
I  managed  to  mop  it  up  with  my  pocket-handkerchief.' 

After  dinner  the  subject  of  subscription  was  introduced. 

'We  went  on  discussing  it  till  after  the  ladies  were  gone, 
and  on  till  12.30  p.m.  {sic).  It  was  an  immense  relief  to 
me.  Gladstone  was  most  satisfactory.  If  he  were  to  say 
publicly  what  he  said  privately,  the  question  would  be 
settled.  I  was  extremely  glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of 
giving  him  all  my  mind  ;  and  he,  lending  himself  to  it  with 


CHAP.  XIX    LETTER  TO  THE  BISHOP  OF  LONDON  II9 


the  astounding  readiness  which  he  has,  completely  under- 
stood everything  which  I  said. 

'  What  made  all  this  profusion  of  talk  the  more  remark- 
able was,  that  he  was  full  of  the  Budget,  which  comes  on 
next  Thursday.' 

A  few  days  later  Stanley  published  his  *  Letter  to  the 
Lord  Bishop  of  London  on  the  State  of  Subscription  in  the 
Church  of  England  and  in  the  University  of  Oxford.'  The 
pamphlet  is  a  remarkably  powerful  and  telling  argument 
against  the  network  of  obligations  and  pledges  which  an 
anomalous  and  irregular  machinery  had,  in  the  course  of 
three  centuries  of  ecclesiastical  and  political  struggles,  drawn 
across  the  threshold  of  Ordination  and  University  degrees. 
It  admits  that  the  stringent  form  of  subscription  then 
required  could  only  be  subscribed  as  involving  a  general, 
not  a  particular,  assent.  But  it  points  out  that  it  was  in 
the  power  of  any  '  malignant  and  narrow-minded  partisan  ' 
to 

'rattle  up  the  sleeping  lions,  heedless  of  the  reflection 
that,  when  aroused,  they  will  devour  with  equal  indiscrimi- 
nation on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left,  and  so  add  to  the 
general  evils  of  controversy  the  great  and  peculiar  aggrava- 
tions of  constant  imputations  of  dishonesty  and  bad  faith.' 

It  urges  upon  the  Bishop  that  in  the  direction  of 
relaxation  must  be  sought  one  remedy  at  least  for  — 

'  the  greatest  of  all  calamities  to  the  Church  of  England  — 
the  gradual  falling-off  in  the  supply  of  the  intelligent, 
thoughtful,  and  highly-educated  young  men  who,  twenty 
and  thirty  years  ago,  were  to  be  found  at  every  Ordination.' 

Widely  read  and  eagerly  discussed,  the  brilliant  Letter 
added  fresh  impetus  to  the  cause  of  reform.  After  months 
of  discussion,  both  in  and  out  of  Parliament,  an  Act  of  Par- 
liament, subsequently  ratified  by  canons  of  Convocation, 
substituted   the   existing  form   of   declaration   for  the 


I20 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


numerous  and  stringent  oaths  and  pledges  which  were 
formerly  binding  on  the  clergy.^^ 

At  the  Queen's  request,  Stanley  sent  his  pamphlet  to 
Her  Majesty.  In  a  letter  with  which  he  forwarded  it  to 
Lady  Augusta  Bruce  he  says  : 

'Will  you  kindly  say  to  Her  Majesty  how  much 
honoured  I  feel  by  her  request  to  read  it  ?  I  should  not 
have  presumed  to  send  it,  because  I  am  so  unwilling  ever 
to  appear  to  intrude  our  theological  and  ecclesiastical 
troubles  upon  her. 

'  I  sometimes  think  that  it  is  the  privilege  of  exalted 
station  that  it  is  raised  above  any  of  the  petty  vexations  of 
small  circles  and  particular  professions.  Do  you  remember 
the  answer  of  Nehemiah  to  the  people,  who  wanted  him  to 
leave  off  building  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  and  meet  them 
in  some  village  in  the  plain —  "  I  am  doing  a  great  work, 
so  that  I  cannot  come  down  ;  why  should  the  work  cease 
whilst  I  come  down  to  you.-""  Even  in  my  own  small 
sphere  I  feel  somewhat  aggrieved  at  having  to  "  come 
down"  from  building  up  the  lives  of  David  and  Solomon, 
and  all  my  dear  friends  in  the  Bible  history,  to  enter  into 
this  controversy  about  subscription. 

'Now  I  go  back  with  renewed  pleasure  to  "the  walls  of 
Jerusalem."  It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me  that  I  have  those 
interests  on  which  to  fall  back,  and  it  gives  me  increasing 
confidence  in  any  attempts  that  I  have  made  for  widening 
the  Church  to  feel  that  in  so  doing  I  am  working,  not 
against  the  Bible  or  the  Church  of  England,  but  most 
entirely  in  the  spirit  of  both.' 

^-  The  Act  was  passed  in  1865.  '  In  lieu  of  expressing  in  several  successive 
sets  of  words  his  "unfeigned  assent  and  consent  to  all  and  everything" 
within  the  covers  of  the  Prayer  Book,  and  to  an  acknowledgment  that  "  all 
and  every  one  of  the  Articles,  being  in  number  nine-and-thirty,  besides  the 
Ratification,  are  agreeable  to  the  word  of  God,"  a  clergyman  has  now  on  his 
Ordination  to  declare  once  and  for  all  as  follows  :  "  I  assent  to  the  Thirty- 
Nine  Articles  of  Religion,  and  to  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  of  Order- 
ing of  Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons;  I  believe  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of 
England  as  therein  set  forth  to  be  agreeable  to  the  word  of  God;  and  in 
public  prayer  and  administration  of  the  Sacraments  I  will  use  the  form  in  the 
said  book  prescribed,  and  none  other,  except  so  far  as  shall  be  ordered  by 
lawful  authority'"  {Life  of  Archbishop  Tail,  vol.  i.  Chap.  XVII.  pp.  494-5). 


CHAP.  XIX         THE  QUEEN  AND  STANLEY 


121 


The  Queen's  request  for  Stanley's  pamphlet  on  sub- 
scription afforded  one  of  many  indications  of  the  increasing 
favour  with  which  he  was  regarded  at  Court.  In  March 
1862  he  had  been  appointed  one  of  the  Honorary  Chaplains, 
and,  a  few  months  later,  a  Deputy  Clerk  of  the  Closet.  In 
the  autumn  of  the  same  year  the  Queen  had  wished  him 
to  be  a  bishop,  but  had  not  pressed  her  wish  on  the  Prime 
Minister,  finding  that  Lord  Palmerston  was  opposed  to 
the  appointment,  and  doubting  whether  Stanley  desired 
the  position.  The  intimate  relations  with  the  Royal 
Family  into  which  he  was  brought  supplied  him  with  a  new 
source  of  interest,  and  gratified  what  he  describes  as  his 
'historical  curiosity  to  penetrate  into  unknown  regions.' 
Yet  one  cloud  marred  his  pleasure.  'A  year  ago,'  he 
writes  on  December  14th,  1862,  after  performing  a  memorial 
service  to  the  late  Prince  Consort,  '  it  would  have  been  the 
climax  of  human  interest.  Now  the  charm  of  these  scenes 
is  sadly  worn  off ;  yet  still  I  doubt  whether  there  could 
have  been  anyone  in  England  to  whom  they  could  have 
been  more  moving  than  to  me.' 

Originally  introduced  to  the  Prince  Consort  by  Baron 
Bunsen,  Stanley  had  been  appointed  to  be  one  of  the 
Prince's  Chaplains.  But  it  was  not  till  after  his  return 
from  the  second  tour  in  the  East  that  he  was  brought  into 
close  relations  with  the  Queen.  The  sacrifice  which  he  had 
made  in  leaving  England  to  accompany  the  Prince  of 
Wales  to  Palestine,  and  the  value  of  his  companionship 
throughout  the  tour,  had  been  warmly  appreciated. 
Deeply  moved  by  the  circumstances  of  his  mother's  death, 
the  Queen  had,  through  Lady  Augusta  Bruce,  expressed 
her  sympathy  with  him  in  the  loss.  Throughout  the  tour 
Her  Majesty  had  been  warmly  interested  in  the  extracts 
from  his  letters,  which  Miss  Stanley  forwarded  to  Windsor. 
And  it  was  to  Stanley  that  in  June  r862  the  Queen 


122 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


turned,  in  the  absence  of  General  Bruce,  for  the  private 
details  of  the  expedition.  Thus  began  relations  which 
gradually  ripened  into  unreserved  and  friendly  confidence. 

At  the  Queen's  request,  his  Sermons  Preached  in  the 
East  before  the  Prince  of  Wales  were  privately  printed. 
Both  in  what  they  say  and  in  what  they  omit  to  say  the 
sermons  are  remarkably  characteristic.  '  My  "  Sermons 
in  the  East,"  '  he  writes  to  the  present  Dean  of  Westminster 
in  November  1862, 

'  were  to  me  on  the  journey  an  immense  relief,  and  it  was  a 
great  satisfaction  to  find  that  by  the  end  of  the  time  I  had 
said  in  them  almost  everything  that  I  could  have  wished 
to  say.' 

Free  from  dogmatic  exposition,  brief,  bold,  and  manly, 
they  were  directed  to  the  practical  end  of  influencing  life 
and  conduct.  Avoiding  doctrinal  questions  or  contro- 
versial disputes,  they  fasten  upon  those  essential  principles 
which  he  had  himself  found  to  be  the  best  support  of  the 
Christian  character.  Writing  to  Lady  Augusta  Bruce  in 
May  1863,  he  says  : 

'It  was  one  of  the  blessings  of  my  journey  in  the  East, 
on  which  I  look  back  with  true  thankfulness,  that  I  had  to 
fix  my  attention  on  those  parts  of  Christianity  which  were 
at  once  the  most  important  and  the  most  clear  of  any  of 
these  modern  controversies.  These  I  knew  would  be  most 
useful  for  the  Prince  of  Wales,  as  they  were  also  most 
useful  to  me.' 

The  persuasive  earnestness  and  solemn  eloquence  of 
his  practical  appeals,  the  picturesqueness  of  the  language, 
the  felicitous  use  of  local  colour,  the  skilful  adaptation  of 
the  natural  features  which  each  spot  in  turn  presented  to 

1^  The  Sermons  were  subsequently  published.  Sermons  Preached  before 
/lis  Royal  Highness  the  Prince  of  IVales  during  his  Tour  in  the  East  in  the 
Spring  of  1862,  with  Notices  of  some  of  the  Localities  visited.  Published  by 
command.    London,  1863. 


CHAP.  XIX  THE  QUEEN  AND  STANLEY 


123 


the  enforcement  of  moral  lessons,  triumphed  over  the 
difficult  conditions  of  their  delivery.  In  the  midst  of  all 
the  distractions  of  foreign  travel  they  riveted  the  attention 
of  those  who  heard  them.  Nor  did  Stanley's  opinion  of 
the  sermons  change  with  years.  In  1875  he  alludes  to 
them  in  a  letter  written  to  the  Hon.  Lady  Welby : 

'  You  ask  about  my  sermons.  Since  I  published  my 
"  Sermons  in  the  East  "  (those  which  I  preached  before  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  which,  I  think,  contain  my  thoughts 
on  the  most  sacred  and  spiritual  subjects  more  truly  than 
anything  else  that  I  have  written)  I  have  printed  none, 
except  in  "  Good  Words,"  &c.  I  have  an  impression  that 
they  do  not  reach  the  public,  and  I  have  an  instinctive 
dread  of  asking  the  world  to  read  what  it  professes  not  to 
care  for.' 

In  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1862  Stanley  was  more 
than  once  summoned  to  Windsor  or  to  Osborne.  The 
news  of  the  engagement  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  sent 
to  him  from  Laeken,  bringing  him,  as  he  says  in  September 
1862,  'one  ray  of  real  happiness.'  At  the  anniversary  of 
the  Prince  Consort's  death  he  spent  a  week  at  Windsor. 
'  Such  a  week  of  various  mournful,  moving  scenes  I  never 
passed.'  On  Sunday,  December  14th,  1862,  two  special 
services  were  held  in  the  Queen's  private  rooms,  both  of 
which  were  conducted  by  Stanley. 

'.  .  .  The  Queen  had  desired  that  I  should  read  some  part 
of  the  last  chapters  of  St.  John,  some  prayers,  and  perhaps 
an  extract  from  my  Sermon.  ...  In  the  morning  I  went 
at  g.45  to  Mrs.  Bruce's  room,  and  with  her  and  Lady 
Augusta  fo  the  fatal  room.  I  went  in  first.  There  was 
the  valet  who  had  been  with  him  at  his  death.  There  was 
a  table  placed  for  me.  In  a  few  moments  they  came  in. 
I  began  by  kneeling  down  and  reading  two  prayers,  chiefly 
made  up  from  the  Burial  Service.  I  then  sate  down  and 
read  John  xiv.  1-6,  18-20,  27,  28;  xvi.  7,  16-22,  28,  32, 
33,  and  upon  these  verses  read  about  five  pages  of  reflec- 
tions, which  I  had  written  in  the  morning.    Then  two  more 


124 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1S63 


prayers  and  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  an  enlarged  form  of 
the  Blessing.  The  Queen  then  rose  from  the  bedside,  where 
she  had  been  kneeling,  kissed  the  Princesses  (I  think  the 
Princes  kissed  her  hand),  kissed  the  Bruces,  and  then  came 
across  to  me.  I  knelt  and  kissed  her  hand,  and  she  passed 
away  with  all  the  others.  .  .  . 

' .  .  .  The  room  was  almost  exactly  as  it  was  when  I  saw 
it  before,  except,  perhaps,  that  there  were  fresh  garlands  of 
flowers  on  the  beds  and  round  the  bust.  It  was  a  very 
bright  morning,  and  there  was  nothing  of  funeral  gloom  in 
the  room.  The  great  state  bed,  in  which  the  kings  had 
died,  had  been  moved  out  early  in  the  illness  to  make  room 
for  smaller  beds.  .  .  . 

'.  .  .  I  then  returned  to  my  room  and  revised  my 
sermon.  The  service  was  at  12  —  Litany  and  Communion 
Service  as  usual.  There  was  the  usual  congregation  —  none 
of  the  Royal  Family  present,  except  the  Prince  of  Wales 
and  Prince  Louis.  .  .  .' 

He  adds  a  postscript  to  tell  his  sister  of  the  Queen's 
satisfaction  with  the  service,  and  to  send  her  a  rough  draft 
of  the  prayers  which  he  had  used. 

'  You  will  be  pleased  to  hear  that  the  Queen  expressed 
to  Mrs.  Bruce  the  greatest  comfort  and  satisfaction  in  the 
service  of  this  morning,  and  had  desired  that  I  would  print 
it  privately  for  her  use,  and  also  asked  me  to  read  again 
this  evening,  at  about  9.30  (the  hour  of  the  death), which  I 
did.  There  were  present  the  whole  family,  the  Bruces, 
the  Duchess  of  Athole,  Lady  C.  Barrington,  and  a  few 
servants.' 

Of  his  private  interviews  with  the  Queen  during  the 
week  at  Windsor  Stanley  records  every  detail  for  the 
gratification  of  his  sister.  His  stay  closed  with  the  con- 
secration of  the  Mausoleum  at  Frogmore,  and  the  subsequent 
memorial  service. 

'At  II  the  Dean  of  Christ  Church  arrived,  and  with  him 
and  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  we  went  to  the  Mausoleum.  The 
whole  Household  were  there.  The  clergy  (the  Bishop,  the 
two  Deans,  and  two  or  three  of  the  Windsor  clergy)  were  on 
a  raised  platform  at  the  east  end,  immediately  above  the 


CHAP.  XIX       EASTER  AT  SANDRINGH AM,  1863  1 25 


sarcophagus.  The  Queen  and  all  the  children  came  in 
when  everyone  was  assembled.  They  remained  inside 
whilst  the  clergy  and  choir  walked  round  chanting  the 
Psalm.  The  Bishop  then  read  the  two  or  three  prayers 
extremely  well,  and  then  were  sung  two  hymns.  I  could 
not  see,  indeed,  I  did  not  venture  to  look  at,  the  Queen. 
Then  was  read  the  Deed  of  Consecration  (prefaced  by  the 
letter  of  the  Queen  herself)  by  Sir  R.  Phillimore.  Then 
she  and  the  family  passed  out,  and  we  returned  as  we  came. 
The  Dean  of  Christ  Church  received  a  message  to  stay  for 
the  night,  and  had  an  interview  both  with  the  Prince  of 
Wales  and  the  Queen.  .  .  .  After  dinner  I  was  summoned 
to  the  Queen.  She  was  sitting  with  the  Princess  Alice. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  conversation,  about  "  Essays 
and  Reviews,"  about  the  Apocalypse,  the  Psalms  —  most 
interesting. 

'This  morning  (Thursday)  I  walked  with  the  Household 
to  the  Mausoleum.  The  coffin  had  been  moved  early  in 
the  morning,  and  deposited  in  a  temporary  sarcophagus. 
We  all  assembled  outside.  Then  came  the  Queen  and 
children,  who  passed  in  first.  .  .  .  The  Dean  of  Windsor 
stood  alone  at  a  small  table  and  read  passages  from  the 
Bible,  wonderfully  appropriate  —  "the  sepulchre  in  the 
garden,"  "  the  new  sepulchre,"  &c.,  and  an  admirable  prayer. 
He  was  deeply  affected,  and  could  hardly  struggle  through. 
Then  the  Queen  and  children  went  and  knelt  by  the  coffin, 
each  depositing  their  wreath,  and  passed  out.  Each  of  the 
Household,  from  Lord  Granville  downwards,  went  up  and 
deposited  their  wreaths  in  like  manner.  It  was  extremely 
touching  ;  more  so  than  the  ceremony  yesterday  ;  as  much 
so  almost  as  the  funeral.' 

During  his  visit  to  Windsor  the  Prince  of  Wales  had 
verbally  invited  Stanley  to  administer  the  Sacrament  to 
him  and  the  Princess  Alexandra  at  Sandringham  on  Easter 
Sunday,  1863.  The  Prince  was  married  on  March  loth,  1863. 
On  the  following  Sunday  Stanley  preached  a  sermon  at 
Whitehall  on  '  Christ  at  the  Marriage  in  Cana,'  which  con- 
vinced more  than  one  of  his  hearers  that  he  who  could 
thus  describe  married  life  '  might  make  his  own,  if  he  had 
a  wife,  the  perfection  of  human  bliss.' 


126 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


'  In  spite  of  all  the  fancies  and  perversions  and  exag- 
gerations of  later  times,  the  institution  of  Christian 
marriage  and  the  blessings  of  a  Christian  home  are  such 
as  have  indeed  been  worthy  of  "  this  beginning  of  miracles." 
A  happy  marriage  is  a  new  beginning  of  life,  a  new  starting- 
point  for  happiness  and  usefulness  ;  it  is  the  great  opportu- 
nity once  for  all  to  leave  the  past,  with  all  its  follies  and 
faults  and  errors,  far,  far  behind  us  for  ever,  and  to  press 
forward  with  new  hopes,  and  new  courage,  and  new  strength 
into  the  future  which  opens  before  us.  A  happy  home  is 
the  best  likeness  of  heaven  ;  a  home  where  husband  and 
wife,  father  and  mother,  brother  and  sister,  child  and  parent, 
each  in  their  several  ways,  help  each  the  other  forward  in 
their  difficult  course  as  no  other  human  being  can ;  for 
none  else  has  the  same  opportunities  ;  none  else  so  know 
the  character  of  any  other ;  none  else  has  such  an  interest 
at  stake  in  the  welfare,  and  the  fame,  and  the  grace,  and 
the  goodness  of  anyone  else  as  of  those  who  are  bone  of 
his  bone  and  flesh  of  his  flesh,  in  whose  happiness  and 
glory  we  ourselves  become  happy  and  glorious,  in  whose 
misery  we  become  miserable,  by  whose  selfishness,  and 
weakness,  and  worldliness  we  are  dragged  down  to  earth  ; 
by  whose  purity,  and  nobleness,  and  strength  we  are  raised 
up,  almost  against  our  will,  to  duty,  to  heaven,  and  to 
God.' 

A  fortnight  later  the  Prince  of  Wales  by  letter  renewed 
his  verbal  invitation  to  Sandringham.  '  It  would  be 
especially  agreeable  to  me,'  writes  the  Prince,  'as  last 
Easter  Sunday  we  took  the  Holy  Sacrament  together  at 
the  Lake  of  Tiberias.' 

'  On  the  evening  of  Easter-eve,'  writes  Stanley, 

'  the  Princess  came  to  me  in  a  corner  of  the  drawing-room 
with  her  Prayer  Book,  and  I  went  through  the  Communion 
Service  with  her,  explaining  the  peculiarities,  and  the  like- 
nesses, and  differences  to  and  from  the  Danish  service.  She 
was  most  simple  and  fascinating.' 

In  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  J.  N.  Simpkinson,  Stanley 
speaks  of  the  pleasure  which  his  visit  to  Sandringham 
afforded  him  : 


CHAP.  XIX     CONVERSATION  WITH  THE  QUEEN  12/ 


'  I  turn  to  a  better  and  more  cheering  side  of  the  world. 
.  .  .  My  visit  to  Sandringham  gave  me  intense  pleasure. 
The  Easter-day  at  Tiberias  was  the  one  day  on  which  I  look 
back  in  our  whole  journey  with  quite  unmixed  satisfaction, 
and  therefore  it  was  a  great  matter  of  thankfulness  that  the 
Prince  should  have  wished  to  keep  such  a  remembrance  of 
it.  I  was  there  for  three  days.  I  read  the  whole  service, 
preached,  and  then  gave  the  first  English  Sacrament  to 
this  "  Angel  in  the  Palace."  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  her,  and 
can  truly  say  that  she  is  as  charming  and  beautiful  a 
creature  as  ever  passed  through  a  fairy-tale.' 

The  summer  of  1863  found  Stanley  again  at  Osborne. 
Among  the  topics  that  were  touched  upon  in  an  interview 
with  the  Queen,  he 

'asked  for  an  account  of  the  news  of  her  accession.  "It 
was  this.  About  6  a.m.  mamma  came  and  called  me,  said  I 
must  go  and  see  Lord  Conyngham  directly  —  alone.  I  got 
up,  put  on  my  dressing-gown,  and  went  into  a  room  where  I 
found  Lord  Conyngham  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
Lord  Conyngham  knelt,  kissed  my  hand,  and  gave  me  the 
certificate  of  the  King's  death.  In  an  hour  from  that  time 
Baron  Stockmar  came.  He  had  been  sent  over  by  King 
Leopold  on  hearing  of  the  King's  dangerous  illness.  At 
2  P.M.  that  same  day  I  went  to  the  Council,  led  by  my  two 
uncles,  the  King  of  Hanover,  and  the  Duke  of  Cambridge. 

' "  Lord  Melbourne  was  very  useful  to  me,  but  I  can 
never  be  sufficiently  thankful  that  I  passed  safely  through 
those  two  years  to  my  marriage.  Then  I  was  in  a  safe 
haven,  and  there  I  remained  for  twenty  years.  Now  that 
is  over,  and  I  am  again  at  sea,  always  wishing  to  consult 
one  who  is  not  here,  groping  by  myself,  with  a  constant 
sense  of  desolation."  ' 

Children  were  always  attracted  to  Stanley,  and  he  com- 
pletely won  the  heart  of  Princess  Beatrice,  then  a  child  of 
six  years  old.  He  had  first  met  the  Princess,  in  the 
corridor  at  Windsor,  in  November  1862. 

'  She  was  with  Mrs.  Bruce,  and  when  I  came  up  to 
them  there  was  much  whispering  and  entreaty.  She  wished 
Mrs.  Bruce  to  ask  a  question  which  she  was  at  last  induced 


128 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


to  put  herself.  "  Is  it  true  that  he  can  neither  taste  nor 
smell  ? "  Then  followed  an  animated  conversation  on 
tasting  and  smelling.' 

At  Osborne  in  July,  he  describes  a  tea-party  with  her 
at  the  Swiss  Cottage ;  a  surprise  of  curds  and  sugar  in  the 
summer-house ;  a  game  of  croquet,  in  which  he  was  defeated  ; 
a  visit  to  the  Confectionery,  '  a  fascinating  place  piled  up 
with  cakes  of  every  description,  but  guarded  by  a  witch, 
whom  I  was  first  obliged  to  exorcise.'  He  also  records 
with  particular  delight  another  scene  at  the  Swiss  Cottage. 
'The  Princess  offered  Mrs.  Bruce  some  cakes  of  her  own 
making.  Mrs.  Bruce  declined  them.  "Very  well,  then," 
said  the  Princess,  "as  Dr.  Stanley  is  not  here  I  shall  give 
them  to  the  donkey."  ' 


CHAP.  XX  THOUGHTS  OF  MARRIAGE 


129 


CHAPTER  XX 

August-December,  1863 

THOUGHTS  OF  MARRIAGE  — PROSPECTS  OF  PREFERMENT  — 
TOUR  IN  ITALY— ENGAGEMENT  TO  LADY  AUGUSTA  BRUCE 
—  ACCEPTANCE  OF  THE  DEANERY  OF  WESTMINSTER  — SER- 
MON ON  'GREAT  OPPORTUNITIES'  — MARRIAGE  — INSTAL- 
LATION AS  DEAN 

During  the  year  and  a  half  which  had  elapsed  since  his 
mother's  death  Stanley  had  met  with  many  interests  to 
withdraw  his  attention  from  dwelling  too  exclusively  upon 
his  bereavement.  But,  even  in  the  midst  of  distractions  that 
formerly  would  have  absorbed  his  mind,  he  was  oppressed 
by  a  numbing  sense  of  loneliness.  Neither  the  excitement 
of  controversy,  nor  preaching,  nor  literary  work,  nor  lec- 
tures, nor  Court  favour,  filled  the  blank  in  his  life.  His 
relations,  his  friends,  and  he  himself,  grew  conscious  that 
something  more  was  needed  to  restore  the  buoyancy  of  his 
spirits,  to  revive  his  hopefulness,  to  replace  the  broken 
mainspring  of  action.  A  happy  marriage  seemed  to  offer 
the  only  substitute  for  all  that  he  had  lost,  and  his  sisters 
were  rejoiced  to  find,  not  only  that  his  thoughts  were  turn- 
ing in  that  direction,  but  that,  if  his  feelings  were  recipro- 
cated, his  choice  was  made. 

Stanley's  connection  with  the  Court  brought  him  fre- 
quently into  contact  with  Lady  Augusta  Bruce.^  The 
acquaintance  between  them  was  of  long  standing.  It  dated 
at  least  from  1857,  when  they  had  met  in  Paris  at  the  house 

1  Lady  Augusta  Bruce  was  the  5th  daughter  of  the  7th  Earl  of  Elgin. 
VOL.  II  K 


I30  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1863 

of  Madame  Mohl.  A  letter  from  Mrs.  Stanley,  written  in 
January  1862,  seems  to  show  that  she  was  aware  of  the 
impression  which  Lady  Augusta  had  already  made  upon 
her  son.  Lady  Augusta  had  written  to  thank  her  for  the 
present  of  a  little  book,  compiled  by  Mrs.  Vaughan,  and 
called  '  Rays  of  Sunlight  for  Dark  Days.'  '  It  was,'  replies 
Mrs.  Stanley, 

*  your  devoted  friend,  Arthur  Stanley,  and  not  his  mother, 
who  sent  the  little  book.  I  have  forwarded  your  most  kind 
answer  to  him,  and  I  need  hardly  say  how  gratified  he,  and 
still  more  Mrs.  Vaughan,  will  feel  at  the  opportunity  given 
to  any  of  those  selected  words  of  conveying  a  drop  of  com- 
fort to  any  one  of  that  sacred  family,  for  sacred  truly  the 
whole  nation  considers  it. 

'  One  word  more  allow  me,  dear  Lady  Augusta.  How 
often  we  have  spoken  and  thought  of  the  blessing  of  know- 
ing that  jo!(  were  there,  and  of  imagining,  from  what  we  did 
know,  w/iat  you  would  be,  at  such  a  time,  of  strength  and 
support,  and,  when  the  time  for  it  came,  of  cheerfulness.' 

Recent  events  had  not  only  thrown  Stanley  into  the 
society  of  Lady  Augusta  ;  they  had  also  drawn  them  closely 
together.  The  bond  between  them  was  interwoven  with 
many  strands  of  human  sorrow.  Within  the  space  of  four 
months,  the  one  had  lost  a  brother,  the  other  a  mother. 
Their  mutual  friends  remarked  with  pleasure  the  growing 
intimacy.  It  had  been  the  cherished  wish  of  General  Bruce, 
that  two  persons  so  eminently  fitted  to  be  the  complement 
of  each  other's  happiness  should  learn  to  know  and  love 
one  another.  'I  never  saw,'  he  told  his  wife  in  i860,  'two 
people  so  likely  to  suit  each  other  as  Dr.  Stanley  and 
Augusta.'  In  January  1862,  after  dwelling  on  the  advantage 
that  it  was  both  to  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  himself  to 
secure  the  companionship  of  Stanley,  he  had  added  :  '  This 
will  also  help  my  design  of  making  him  meet  Augusta.' 
Always  dependent  in  a  peculiar  degree  on  feminine  sym- 


CHAP.  XX       HIS  RUMOURED  ENGAGEMENT 


pathy,  Stanley  felt,  with  an  ever-increasing  sense  of  loneli- 
ness, the  blank  which  his  mother's  death  had  left,  and  the 
loss  of  the  strength  and  support  which  he  had  derived  from 
her  encouragement,  and  which,  in  Church  matters,  he  could 
no  longer  receive  from  his  sister  Mary.  In  the  late  sum- 
mer of  1863  rumours  were  rife  of  his  engagement  to  Lady 
Augusta  Bruce.  The  report  was  premature.  Stanley  still 
hesitated  to  declare  his  feelings.  '  It  is  clear  to  me,'  he 
says  in  August  to  Mary  Stanley, 

'  that,  if  life  and  health  are  spared  to  me,  my  course  will 
never  again  be  smooth.  I  feel  that  in  the  Church  a  line 
has  been  marked  out  for  me  which  I  cannot  abandon,  to 
which  I  shall  have  often  to  give  my  undivided  soul,  which 
would  require  all  the  thought  and  labour  and  time  that  I 
could  bestow.  I  do  not  doubt  that  I  should  derive  immense 
support  —  indeed,  that  I  might  gain  new  strength  and  life 
altogether  —  from  one  who  would  feel  with  me  and  think  for 
me  in  such  a  career.  This,  you  know,  our  dearest  mother 
was  to  me.  But  I  shrink  from  imposing  on  anyone  else 
the  burden  which  she  undertook  from  her  own  natural  love 
and  sympathy.' 

In  September  1863,  while  still  hesitating  over  the  most 
important  step  of  his  life,  he  started  with  his  sister  Mary 
and  Hugh  Pearson  on  a  tour  through  Italy,  in  which 
Canosa,  Rome,  and  Monte  Casino  were  to  be  the  principal 
points  of  interest.  Before  he  left  England,  rumour  was 
again  busy  with  his  name  in  connection  with  Church  pre- 
ferment. So  confidently  was  it  stated  that  he  had  been 
offered  the  Archbishopric  of  Dublin,  that  Bishop  Tait  wrote 
begging  him  not  to  decline  the  offer.  His  answer  was  as 
follows  : 

'  Christ  Church,  Oxford  :  Sept.  1863. 

'  My  dear  Bishop,  —  I  did  not  answer  your  kind  note 
because  there  was  nothing  to  say.  I  have  had  absolutely 
no  communication  on  the  subject. 

'  But,  were  the  Archbishopric  to  be  offered,  I  think  that 
I  must  decline  it.    An  English  see  you  know  that,  how- 


K  2 


132 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


ever  reluctantly,  I  should  feel  it  my  duty  to  take ;  because 
in  the  Church  of  England  I  have  a  real  interest,  and  should 
esteem  it  wrong  to  neglect  any  possible  opportunity  of 
rendering  it  a  service. 

'  But  the  Irish  Church  I  cannot  seriously  defend  as  an 
institution.  And  its  whole  position  as  a  "  missionary 
church,"  on  which  ground  alone  the  great  proportion  of  the 
English  public  maintain  it,  I  think  even  more  untenable 
than  the  institution  itself. 

'  How  could  I,  then,  with  hardly  any  sympathy  in  Ire- 
land or  England,  do  any  good  there 

'  I  think  I  anticipate  your  arguments  in  behalf  of  my 
taking  it :  there  would  be  more  leisure  than  in  an  English 
see  ;  and  there  would  be  a  chance  of  being  more  indepen- 
dent of  these  endless  Biblical  and  critical  wrangles  than  one 
can  be  in  England. 

'  Nevertheless,  the  great  arguments  against  leaving  Eng- 
land (including  also  the  Queen)  and  going  to  Ireland  are 
too  powerful. 

'What  Butler  said  wrongly  about  Canterbury  I  think  I 
may  truly  say  (in  my  humble  measure)  of  Dublin  :  "  It  is 
too  late  to  support  a  falling  Church." 

'  Ever  yours  truly, 
'A.  P.  Stanley.' 

Before  writing  this  answer  he  had  heard  that  the  Deanery 
of  Westminster  was  likely  to  become  vacant  by  the 
elevation  of  Dr.  Trench  to  the  Archbishopric  of  Dublin. 
He  knew  that  in  all  probability  the  Deanery  would  be 
offered  to  him.  While  the  public  was  hotly  discussing 
his  possible  elevation  to  the  Irish  archbishopric,  he  was 
making  up  his  mind  that,  if  the  offer  came,  he  would  leave 
Oxford  for  Westminster.  But  before  he  finally  decided 
he  asked  the  advice  of  Dr.  Liddell,  then  Dean  of  Christ 
Church,  in  the  soundness  of  whose  judgment  he  placed 
implicit  confidence  : 

'  The  Archbishop  of  Dublin  is  believed  to  be  dying.  It 
is  thought  by  many  that  Trench  will  be  his  successor.  It 
is  with  a  heavy  heart  that  I  anticipate,  as  a  not  improbable 
consequence,  the  offer  of  Westminster  to  myself.    As  has 


CHAP.  XX      PROSPECT  OF  LEAVING  OXFORD 


SO  often  happened  to  me  in  life,  the  change,  which  to  many 
would  seem  the  most  delightful,  possibly  would  be  to  me, 
now,  and  for  the  present  at  least,  full  of  pain  and  repugnance. 

'  But,  if  it  were  offered,  I  think  that,  for  various  cogent 
reasons,  which  you  can  figure  to  yourself,  at  least  in  part, 
without  any  description,  I  ought  not  to  decline  it. 

'  I  shall,  in  all  probability,  be  still  abroad  when  the 
vacancy  (if  so  be)  occurs,  and  shall  therefore  be  out  of  reach 
of  immediate  communication.  But  you  will  probably  know 
whether  the  offer  has  been  made,  and  from  this  letter  you 
will  know  beforehand  that  (unless  unforeseen  arguments  from 
yourself  or  anyone  else  should  intercept  my  acceptance)  I 
should,  however  reluctantly,  accept  the  Deanery.' 

Stanley  had  taken  so  firm  a  root  at  Oxford  that  the 
idea  of  change,  always  distasteful  to  his  mind,  was  unwel- 
come. Yet  there  was  much  in  the  condition  of  the  Univer- 
sity which  rendered  him  less  averse  to  seek  another  sphere 
of  usefulness.  During  the  past  three  years  Oxford  had 
again  become  the  battle-ground  of  party  strife.  The 
atmosphere  had  grown  parched  and  dry  with  the  heat  of 
theological  controversy.  Society  was  split  up  by  feuds, 
which  poisoned  social  intercourse  and  dissolved  private 
friendships.  Towards  Stanley  himself,  who  was  prom- 
inently identified  with  three  of  the  contests  that  were 
raging  in  the  University,  the  language  of  his  theological 
opponents  had  become  intensely  embittered.  Of  one  of 
the  leaders  he  says,  '  So  entirely  is  he,  in  this  respect, 
bereft  of  reason  as  to  render  charity  comparatively  easy.' 

Of  the  movement  in  favour  of  relaxing  the  terms  of 
subscription  Stanley  had  made  himself  the  mouthpiece, 
and  all  change  was  vehemently  opposed  by  both  the  two 
great  parties  in  the  University.  Into  the  struggle  for  the 
endowment  of  the  Greek  Professorship  he  threw  himself 
with  all  the  energy  of  his  chivalrous  nature.^  For  six  years 

*  A  Speech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Convocation,  November  20,  l86l, 
on  the  Endowment  of  the  Regius  Professorship  of  Greek.  With  Notes.  By 
Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  D.D.    Oxford,  1861. 


134 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


he  had  watched  Professor  Jowett  assiduously  and  laboriously 
lecturing  to  the  most  intellectual  of  the  undergraduates,  and 
living  the  life  of  a  hermit,  that  he  might  devote  more  time 
to  his  work.  No  hindrance  was  interposed  by  Heads  of 
Houses  or  tutors  to  prevent  the  young  men  under  their 
charge  from  attending  his  lectures.  By  accepting  his 
labours  the  University,  as  Stanley  argued,  incurred  the 
obligation,  that  she  was  bound  in  simple  honour  and  justice 
to  discharge,  of  rewarding  him  with  the  same  reasonable 
endowments  with  v/hich  she  remunerated  other  professors. 
She  was  boun'd,  in  his  opinion,  either  to  accept  Professor 
Jowett's  teaching  and  reward  him,  or  to  refuse  his  teaching 
and  withhold  the  reward.  Yet,  time  after  time,  the  Uni- 
versity, while  accepting  his  work,  was  induced  by  a  combi- 
nation of  ecclesiastical  parties  to  reject  the  proposal  to 
increase  the  endowment  of  the  Greek  chair  beyond  the 
paltry  sum  of  ^40  a  year.  At  the  end  of  1862  the  struggle 
assumed  a  new  phase.  Dr.  Pusey,  in  union  with  Professor 
Heurtley  and  Professor  Ogilvie,  commenced  the  prosecution 
of  Professor  Jowett  for  heresy  in  the  Vice-Chancellor's 
Court  at  Oxford.  The  result  of  such  a  step  was  not  for 
one  moment  doubtful.  So  confident  was  Stanley  of  the 
triumph  of  the  accused,  that  he  used  his  influence  to  stifle 
a  protest,  which  some  members  of  the  University  were 
anxious  to  promote.  But  in  a  sermon  ^  preached  before  the 
University  on  February  8th,  1863,  he  directly  attacks  the 

^Theological  hatred — the  hatred  of  Christians  by  each 
other  for  their  theological  opinions,  the  bitter  internecine 
hatred  of  those  of  whom  in  former  ages  it  was  said,  "  See 
how  they  love  one  another."  ' 

The  rules  which  in  that  sermon  he  lays  down  to  abate  the 

*  The  sermon  was  published.  Human  Corruption :  A  Sermon  preached 
before  the  University  of  Oxford  on  Sexagesima  Sunday,  February  8,  1863. 
Oxford,  1863. 


CHAP.  XX 


K/NCSLEV'S  DEGREE 


evil  of  controversy  were  rules  which  he  himself  always 
endeavoured  to  practise  : 

*  Never  condemn  a  book  unless  ive  have  read  it.  .  .  . 

'  Let  us  determine  never  to  condemn  in  one  man  the  same 
sentiment  which  in  another  we  forgive  or  applaud.  .  .  . 

'  Let  us  never  judge  of  one  side  of  the  question  without 
hearing  or  reading  the  other  side.  .  .  . 

'  Let  ns  never  impute  to  our  opponents,  tvhether  Churches, 
sects,  or  individuals,  intentions  which  they  themselves  dis- 
claim, f tor  fasten  upon  them  opprobriotts  names  which  they 
themselves  repudiate.  .  .  . 

'  Let  us  never  attack  anyone  zvithout  first  making  out 
deliberately,  carefully,  seriously,  all  the  poifits  wherein  we 
agree  ;  and  then,  and  ftot  till  then,  stating  the  points  zvherein 
ive  disagree ;  and  stating  these  also  to  ourselves  no  less  de- 
liberately, carefully,  and  seriously,  lest,  after  all,  there  be 
perchance  no  disagreernent  at  all,  or  not  that  which  we  thought 
there  was.' 

The  summer  of  1863  added  a  third  contest,  which  v/as 
provoked  by  the  same  theological  bitterness.  Stanley  and 
Dr.  Liddell  had  proposed  that  the  University  should  confer 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.C.L.on  the  Rev.  Charles  Kingsley. 
The  proposal  was  resisted  by  Dr.  Pusey,  partly  on  the 
ground  of  Kingsley's  universalism,  but  more  particularly 
on  the  ground  that  'Hypatia'  was  a  work  not  fit  to 
be  read  by  our  'wives  and  sisters.'  To  Stanley  the 
attack  on  'Hypatia'  seemed  the  more  unjustifiable  and 
offensive  because  the  book  had  been  recommended  to  him 
by  Mrs.  Augustus  Hare,  and  because  he  had  himself  urged 
his  mother  to  read  it.  He  carefully  prepared  a  speech  for 
the  Council,  in  which  he  demanded 

'that  the  aspersions  cast  upon  the  moral  character  of  the 
book,  in  the  gross  language  which  I  have  copied  out  from 
Pusey's  lips,  be  withdrawn.' 

In  writing  to  Dr.  Liddell  on  the  subject  he  adds  a  note 
which,  to  those  who  remember  him  in  later  days,  is  curious  : 


136  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1863 


'  I  will  write  out  what  I  mean  to  say,  and  bring  it  with 
me.  Unfortunately,  I  have  not  the  slightest  presence  of 
mind  or  fluency  of  utterance  on  these  occasions.' 

But  though  the  atmosphere  of  controversy  in  which  he 
was  plunged  made  him,  in  one  sense,  eager  to  leave 
Oxford,  it  supplied  another,  and  more  powerful,  in- 
ducement to  remain.  He  could  not  endure  the  thought 
of  leaving  his  friends  to  fight  their  battles  alone.  Dr. 
Liddell,  in  replying  to  Stanley's  letter,  strongly  dis- 
suaded him  from  accepting  the  Deanery  of  Westminster. 
The  advice,  as  Stanley  afterwards  said,  would  have  power- 
fully influenced  his  decision  ;  but  the  letter  missed  him  at 
Milan,  and  did  not  reach  him  till  January  1864,  when  the 
change  was  already  made.  Dr.  Liddell's  advice  was  plain- 
spoken  : 

' .  .  .  I  apprehend  from  your  language  that  if  the  Deanery 
of  Westminster  falls  vacant,  you  knozv  it  will  be  offered  you. 
Well,  I  heartily  regret  it,  partly  for  selfish  reasons,  no 
doubt,  but  partly  because  I  really  think  you  would  be  both 
more  useful  and  happier  in  your  Chair  at  Oxford.  Life  in 
London,  no  doubt,  has  its  bright  side  ;  but  to  live  perforce 
for  eight  months  in  Westminster  is  {experto  crede)  not 
an  enviable  lot.  Preaching  in  the  Abbey  will  give  you 
a  wide  scope  of  influence  ;  but  I  know  not  how  far  your 
physical  powers  will  be  adequate  to  fill  that  vast  space  ;  and 
I  much  question  whether  any  influence  you  may  there 
exert  will,  in  reality,  be  nearly  so  great  as  that  which  you 
have  at  Oxford.  There,  at  best,  you  will  infuse  a  flavour 
or  a  fermenting  action  into  the  mass  ;  at  Oxford  you  create 
the  flavour  and  the  fermenting  leaven  itself.  You  will  have 
a  seat  in  Convocation.  But  that  is  a  barren  honour :  and  I 
think  you  will  soon  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  time 
spent  in  that  body  of  debate,  not  action,  is  wasted  time. 
Nor  will  you  be  more  at  Her  Majesty's  service  at  West- 
minster than  at  Oxford  ;  nay,  not  so  much.  For,  being 
bound  to  eight  months'  residence,  and  desiring  (as  you  will 
desire)  some  time  for  travel,  the  time  at  your  command  will 
become  more  limited  than  at  present  it  is. 


CHAP.  XX 


VISIT  TO  CANOSA 


'These  are  my  honest  conclusions.  No  doubt  most  of 
them  have  occurred  to  you,  and  I  cannot  expect  that  they 
will  have  any  weight  against  other  considerations.' 

The  letter,  as  has  been  said,  miscarried,  and  before 
Stanley's  return  he  had  decided  to  accept  the  Deanery  of 
Westminster.  The  tour  lasted  till  the  end  of  October 
1863.  The  most  interesting  feature  was  the  visit  to 
Canosa,  which,  according  to  his  custom,  is  described  in  a 
letter  to  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley. 

*  H.  P.  and  A.  P.  S.  had  both  an  ardent  desire  to  visit 
Canosa  —  you  remember  the  name,  or,  if  not,  by  turning  to 
the  pages  of  your  beloved  Dean*  you  will  find  it :  but  we 
had  a  very  faint  notion  of  its  whereabouts.  It  was  in  none 
of  our  maps ;  but,  happily,  a  single  allusion  in  Murray's 
handbook  indicated  to  H.  P.'s  watchful  eye  that  it  could 
not  be  very  far  from  Parma.  Accordingly,  after  due  in- 
quiry at  Parma,  whence  it  seemed  that  no  one  had  ever 
visited  this  famous  place,  we  started  at  6  a.m.  in  a  carriage, 
leaving  the  dear  sister  (who  had  not  been  quite  well)  behind, 
to  await  our  return.  We  drove  for  three  hours  over  the 
plain,  and  then  found  ourselves  in  a  village  at  the  foot  of 
the  Apennines.  There  the  road  stopped,  and  we  had  to 
walk  or  ride.  A  country  horse,  with  a  sack  on  its  back 
for  a  saddle,  was  brought  out  to  be  used  between  us,  and 
we  started  over  the  hills,  with  a  peasant  for  a  guide. 

'The  great  Matilda  had  two  castles  in  this  neighbour- 
hood, each  planted  on  an  almost  precipitous  crag ;  one, 
evidently  called  from  the  ruddy  purple  colour  of  the  rock, 
Rosina ;  the  other,  possibly  from  its  ashy  paleness  and 
hoary  limestone  cliff,  Canosa.  We  hit  upon  Rosina  first, 
by  mistake  for  the  other,  but  were  warned  by  the  solitary 
priest  who  lived  there  that  we  must  go  north.  It  was  a 
long  pull,  over  bare  hills,  under  a  burning  sun,  for  two 
hours  ;  but  it  was  well  worth  while.  H.  P.,  it  is  true,  was 
reduced  to  a  state  of  lamentable  exhaustion  at  the  end  of 
the  climb,  but  soon  recovered  himself,  and  is  all  the  better 
for  the  exercise,  which  of  itself  shows  how  well  the  journey 
has  answered  for  him. 

'.Anything  more  desolate  than  the  Castle  of  Canosa  can- 

*  Dean  Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity. 


138 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


not  be  conceived.  It  is  a  ruin  of  a  ruin  :  a  few  hovels  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill,  but  the  fortress  itself  totally  deserted, 
and  a  mere  collection  of  shattered  walls  ;  nevertheless,  the 
main  incidents  of  the  scene  can  be  well  made  out. 

'  From  the  top  of  the  Castle  you  can  imagine  Gregory 
and  Matilda  belle,  spirituelle,  j'e  suis  sitr"  I  remember 
Villemain  saying  to  me,  vcrtueiise  j'esptre")  looking  out 
over  the  wide  view  of  Apennines  and  plain  from  Lucca  to 
Modena  —  her  vast  properties,  which  she  then  made  over  to 
her  great  guest.  Underneath  the  Castle  you  see  the  road 
by  which  the  Emperor  came,  bareheaded  and  barefooted, 
in  his  sackcloth  and  shirt,  in  the  driving  snow  (different 
certainly  from  our  fare  on  that  day),  through  the  first 
enclosure,  of  which  the  traces  are  just  visible  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill,  up  the  winding  path  in  the  rock,  to  the  spot  still 
marked  where  he  was  admitted  across  the  drawbridge,  to 
the  gateway  itself,  where  he  was  compelled  to  stand  out- 
side. This  was  the  very  highest  height  of  Hildebrand's 
exaltation  ;  not  Innocent,  not  Boniface,  not  John  Knox, 
not  Dr.  Candlish,  ever  soared  so  high  above  the  tem- 
poral powers.  You  will  see,  if  I  remember  rightly,  in  the 
Dean's  account  how  soon  he  came  crashing  down. 

'  And  now  every  trace  of  the  scene  (except  those 
features  which  I  have  described)  is  gone.  Matilda's 
donation  lost  twice  or  three  times  over ;  her  name  and 
Gregory's  swept  out  of  the  recollection  of  the  peasants,  as 
if  they  had  never  been.  "  Who  has  been  the  owner  of  this 
castle.'"  "Count  Valentine  of  Poland."  "And  who 
before  him.-*"  "We  do  not  know."  A  dim  belief  that 
once  a  Pope  had  been  there  was  all  that  remained.  The 
Priest  of  the  village  knew  a  little  more  from  a  MS.  story- 
book that  he  had  once  had,  but  had  lent  to  someone,  and 
lost ;  and  on  this  hung  all  chance  of  the  continuance  of  the 
tradition.  No  Englishman,  as  far  as  we  could  make  out,  had 
ever  been  there  before.  Perhaps  in  a  few  years  the  rock 
itself  will  disappear  ;  for,  sixteen  years  ago,  huge  fragments 
had  fallen  down  from  the  overhanging  cliff,  and  I  should 
not  be  surprised  if  the  rest  were  to  follow.  I  carried  off  a 
fragment  of  the  stones,  and  a  feather  dropped  by  one  of 
the  flight  of  doves  that,  lingering,  perhaps,  from  Matilda's 
dovecotes,  our  presence  disturbed.' 

Yet,  even  in  the  midst  of  the  delights  of  a  foreign  tour. 


CHAP.  XX     ENGAGEMENT  TO  LADY  A.  BRUCE  139 


the  prevailing  note  of  sadness  is  struck.  He  begins  a 
letter  written  to  Mrs.  Arnold  from  abroad  with  the 
words,  '  A  blight  has  fallen  upon  my  powers  of  writing,  at 
least  of  writing  letters,  against  which  I  cannot  contend. 
You  can  understand  the  reason,  and  forgive  it.' 

At  the  end  of  October  1863,  he  returned  to  Oxford 
with  his  mind  made  up  on  both  the  important  points  which 
he  had  to  decide.  On  November  6th  he  writes  to  his 
cousin,  Louisa  Stanley,  to  announce  his  engagement : 

'  On  this  day  the  proposal  has  been  made  and  received, 
and  the  long-expected  and  widely-rumoured  event  will  at 
last  take  place,  and  you  will  have  a  new  cousin,  Augusta. 

'  Dear  Louisa,  you  will  imagine  with  what  mingled 
thoughts  I  at  last  ventured  on  this  great  step.  But  if  any 
marriage  was  wrought  out  of  many  threads  in  earth  and 
heaven,  it  has  been  this.  Not  —  "  Who  is  it  that  comes 
from  the  Bridal-chamber  "  But  —  "  Who  is  it  that  comes 
from  the  chamber  of  death  "  "  It  is  Raphael,  the  Angel 
of  Life.'" 

Before  his  engagement  was  publicly  known  Stanley 
received  the  following  letter  from  Lord  Palmerston : 

'94  Piccadilly:  November  8,  1863. 

'  My  dear  Sir,  — The  Deanery  of  Westminster  is  about  to 
become  vacant  by  the  promotion  of  Dr.  Trench  to  the 
Archbishopric  of  Dublin,  and  I  have  been  authorised  by 
the  Queen  to  ascertain  whether  it  would  be  agreeable  to 
you  to  accept  that  Deanery  when  it  becomes  vacant.  I 
shall  have  great  pleasure  in  receiving  an  affirmative 
answer. 

'  My  dear  Sir, 

'  Yours  faithfully, 

'  Palmerston. 

'  The  Reverend  Doctor  A.  P.  Stanley.' 

Stanley  at  once  accepted  the  offer,  and  the  news  of  his 
approaching  marriage  was  published  on  the  same  day 
(November  8th,  1863)  as  the  announcement  of  his  accept- 
ance of  the  Deanery  of  Westminster. 


140 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Among  all  the  congratulatory  letters  which  poured  in 
upon  him  from  every  side,  there  were  none  that  did  not 
express  delight  at  his  approaching  marriage.  His  friends, 
and  particularly  those  who  knew  both  him  and  Lady 
Augusta  Bruce,  saw  in  their  union  the  best  possible  means 
of  filling  up  the  blank  in  his  life  which  his  mother's  death 
had  left  behind,  of  restoring  his  buoyancy  and  cheerfulness, 
of  ministering  the  sympathy  and  encouragement  on  which 
he  was  always  so  dependent.  One  lady,  in  the  midst  of 
warm  congratulations,  did,  indeed,  suggest  that  'he  will 
forget  all  about  it  if  he  happens  to  get  hold  of  an  interest- 
ing folio  on  the  fatal  morning.'  But  all  rejoiced  'at  the 
thought  of  his  following  out  in  his  practice  the  doctrine 
which  he  preached  in  Whitehall  Chapel  on  the  Sunday 
after  the  Prince's  marriage.' 

On  his  acceptance  of  the  Deanery  of  Westminster, 
however,  opinions  were  more  divided.  Regrets  were  largely 
mingled  with  congratulations. 

Those  of  his  friends  who  were  not  immediately  con- 
nected with  the  teaching-work  of  Oxford,  for  the  most  part, 
warmly  welcomed  the  change.  There  were,  indeed,  some 
who  felt  misgivings  at  his  exchange  of  an  academic  office 
for  the  wear  and  tear  of  social  and  polemical  life  in  London. 
There  were  others  who,  holding,  with  Newman,  that  'uni- 
versities are  the  natural  centres  of  intellectual  life,'  doubted 
whether  the  influence  which  he  was  sure  to  gain  in  the 
wider  circle  of  the  Metropolis  would  compensate  for  the 
loss  of  the  hold  upon  young  men  which  his  post  at  Oxford 
ensured  to  him.  But,  on  the  whole,  his  acceptance  of  the 
Deanery  was  regarded  as  a  great  gain  to  the  English 
Church.  '  You  could  not  go  on  lecturing  for  ever,'  writes 
Bishop  Tait,  'and  the  calmness  of  the  Deanery,  with  its 
great  position,  will  be  a  blessing.'  '  You  will  not  leave 
Oxford  without  regret,'  says  the  present  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  then  Head  Master  of  Wellington  College, 


CHAP.  XX 


DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER 


141 


'  but  all  well-wishers  to  the  Church  will  rejoice  in  your 
being  installed  in  the  midst  of  the  London  clergy.  And 
the  material  church  of  Westminster  will,  I  hope,  have  to 
rejoice  in  your  work  there,  as  Canterbury  did  before.' 

The  late  Bishop  Lightfoot,  then  Hulsean  Professor  of 
Divinity  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  and  his  colleague 
as  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  offers 
his 

'very  hearty  congratulations  on  your  appointment.  I 
should  feel  more  unalloyed  pleasure  if  I  could  quite  recon- 
cile myself  to  the  thought  of  your  leaving  Oxford.  I  hope, 
at  all  events,  that  it  may  not  interfere  with  our  meeting,  as 
hitherto,  at  Fulham.  If  it  does,  I  shall  not  forgive  Lord 
Palmerston.' 

The  late  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  (R.  W.  Church)  wrote  that 
the  *  Deanery  of  Westminster  seems  made  for  you.'  Mr. 
Bowen  (now  Lord  Justice  Bowen)  expresses  his  delight 

'  that  you  are  going  to  the  Deanery  of  Westminster,  partly 
because  it  is  some  mark  of  honour  to  yourself,  whom  ever 
since  I  was  a  boy  I  have  been  taught  to  look  on  as  the 
most  worthy  of  honour  in  the  Church ;  and  quite  as  much 
because  the  Deanery  of  Westminster  is  the  Blue  Ribbon 
of  learning  and  scholarship,  and  everybody  that  I  know 
and  respect  feels  that  your  appointment  is  what  the 
Government  have  owed  the  country  for  a  long  time.  It 
must  be  pleasant  to  you  to  know  that  all  educated  men 
and  all  the  best  friends  of  the  Church  of  England  are  deeply 
interested  in  any  distinction  bestowed  on  you.' 

Other  friends  rejoiced  in  the  'increased  nearness  to  the 
centre  of  action  '  ;  another  congratulated  him  on  the  relief 
from  'the  letter-writing  drudgery  of  a  bishop';  another 
pointed  to  '  the  leisure  which  the  Deanery  affords  for  the 
continuance  of  literary  work.'  To  one  'the  escape  to  the 
freer  atmosphere  of  London  from  the  narrowness  of  Oxford,' 
to  another  'the  independence,'  seemed  a  'vast  gain'; 
another,  sympathising  with  his  reluctance  to  change  his 


142 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


home,  reminded  him  of  his  dread  at  leaving  Canterbury, 
and  the  quickness  with  which  he  had  taken  root  in  the 
University. 

But  among  his  friends  at  Oxford  the  prevailing  feeling 
was  one  of  almost  unmixed  dismay.  Their  pleasure  at  the 
recognition  of  Stanley's  claims  to  preferment  was  over- 
powered by  the  sense  of  'personal  loss,'  by  'the  grievous 
blank,  which  will  change  the  place,  to  some  of  us,  both  in 
fact  and  in  prospect,'  by  'the  impossibility  of  finding  anyone 
to  fill  your  place,'  by  the  conviction  that  'your  removal  will 
throw  Oxford  back  twent}^  years,'  or  that  '  your  going  away 
is  a  serious  matter,  not  only  for  your  friends,  but  for  the 
University,'  by  the  'difficulty  of  finding  another  to  teach 
as  you  have  done,  by  example  even  more  than  by  precept, 
to  be  truly  charitable  and  considerate,  as  well  as  truly 
liberal  towards  those  who  differ  from  us  in  opinion.' 
Most  strongly  were  these  or  similar  feelings  expressed 
by  Dr.  Liddell,  Professor  Jowett,  and  Professor  Donkin. 
'  On  your  intended  marriage,'  writes  Dr.  Liddell  on  No- 
vember 9th,  1863, 

'  I  do  most  heartily  and  exultingly  congratulate  you.  Since 
you  lost  her,  whose  complete  union  with  you  was  to  me 
one  of  the  most  touching  and  lovely  traits  I  have  met  with 
—  even  in  you  —  I  felt  there  was  a  something  wanted  "  to 
free  the  hollow  heart  from  paining,"  and  I  felt  that,  under 
the  circumstances,  even  in  your  case,  that  something  must 
be  a  wife.  May  Lady  Augusta  be  all  that  you  wish,  and 
you  all  that  she  hopes  ! 

'  But  here,  alas  !  my  congratulations  end.  Neither  for 
you,  nor  for  us,  nor  for  anyone,  can  I  look  with  pleasure  on 
your  leaving  your  living  work  here  for  the  dead  mass  that 

will  meet  you  at  Westminster.   thinks  it  an  excellent 

appointment,  because  it  will  remove  you  from  Oxford.  So, 

no  doubt,  think  the  s  and  s,  and  hoc  genus  omne. 

"Hoc  Ithacus  velit  et  magno  mercentur  Atridae."  Pardon 
my  unavailing  regrets.  You  receive  no  more  honourable 
testimony  than  the  universal  sorrow  of  your  friends  and 


CHAP.  XX 


LEAVING  OXFORD 


143 


the  joy  of  your  non-friends  at  your  promotion  —  though 
"  promotion  "  I  cannot  call  it.' 

Professor  Jowett  writes  in  a  similar  tone  : 

'Balliol  College:  Nov.  8,  1863. 

'  My  dear  Stanley,  —  I  wish  you  every  blessing  and  joy 
in  your  marriage.  I  think  you  are  quite  right  and  wise  in 
marrying.  And  I  am  sure  you  could  not  have  made  a 
better  choice. 

'  Look  at  Genesis  xxiv.  67.^  I  hardly  like  to  tell  you 
that  I  regret  the  other  step  as  much  as  I  rejoice  in  this.  I 
believe  you  could  be  of  more  use  to  the  Court  at  Oxford 
than  in  London,  and  of  much  more  use  to  the  Church. 
The  London  clergy  cannot  be  influenced  like  young  men 
at  Oxford ;  your  time  would  be  wasted  in  meetings  and 
business.  Your  influence  upon  society  depends  a  good  deal 
on  your  having  another  sphere  which  enables  you  to  with- 
draw from  it.  For  a  very  slight  addition  to  possible  influ- 
ence in  London,  you  give  up  the  eminent  success  which  you 
have  had  at  Oxford.  You  will  be  thought  to  have  with- 
drawn from  the  Liberal  cause  at  Oxford,  and  to  have 
accepted  a  great  preferment  at  a  time  when  you  have  begun 
a  war  against  the  majority  of  the  clergy. 

'  My  view  is,  that  you  should  continue  to  fight  the  battle 
here,  and,  when  your  opinions  have  made  more  way,  four 
or  five  years  hence,  cum  consensu  omninni,  you  should  be 
made  a  bishop,  to  fight  the  same  battle  in  another  place. 

'  I  cannot  think  that,  if  this  were  properly  represented 
to  the  Queen,  she,  or  any  other  true  friend  of  yours,  could 
wish  you  to  accept  the  Deanery  of  Westminster. 

'  But  I  must  return  from  this  crabbed  and  unasked-for 
counsel  to  tell  you  how  much  I  rejoice  at  your  marriage. 
I  saw  the  lady  once,  and  I  thought  she  was  frank  and 
good  and  wise,  and  very  unlike  my  imperfect  notions  of 
people  who  live  at  Court,  in  being  the  most  natural  person 
in  the  world.  You  must  forgive  my  counsels,  which  I  only 
send  under  the  idea  that  the  step  may  be  revocable,  and 
believe  me 

'  Your  sincere  friend, 

'B.  Jowett.' 

^  '  And  Isaac  brought  her  into  his  mother  Sarah's  tent,  and  took  Rebekah, 
and  she  became  his  wife;  and  Isaac  was  comforted  after  his  mother's  death.' 


144 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


In  a  similar  strain  wrote  Professor  Donkin  : 

'  When  I  heard  who  was  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  I  in- 
stantly saw  the  shadow  of  the  coming  calamity,  which  came 
before  I  had  time  to  reconcile  myself  to  the  thought  of  it. 

'  Perhaps  it  is  hardly  fair  to  talk  of  it  in  this  way  ;  and 
I  do  really  congratulate  you,  because  I  suppose  the  change 
will  be  really  a  good  one  for  you,  though  the  loss  is  hope- 
lessly irreparable  to  us.  I  mean  that  I  do  not  see  the 
slightest  chance  of  anyone  else  occupying  the  same  position 
in  Oxford,  or  having  the  same  kind  of  influence,  or  having 
so  much  power  to  do  good,  or  being  regarded  with  so  much 
affection  by  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  But  I  do  not 
doubt  that  you  will  be  as  well  and  usefully,  or  even  more 
usefully,  employed  in  your  new  position  ;  and  perhaps  more 
happily,  after  the  first  regrets  (which  1  hope  I  may  assume 
that  you  will  feel)  for  Oxford.' 

It  is  not  surprising  that  such  strong  expressions  of  feel- 
ing should  have  increased  the  reluctance  with  which  Stanley 
decided  upon  leaving  Oxford.  The  forebodings  and  regrets 
of  friends  did  not,  however,  shake  his  resolution.  'They 
are,'  he  says,  '  wrong,  I  believe.  I  shall  be  able  to  do  them 
better  service  at  Westminster  than  had  I  remained.'  But 
the  pain  of  parting  from  the  University  was  at  times  so 
great  as  to  wring  from  him  the  exclamation,  '  Would  that 
I  had  declined  this  wretched  Deanery,  or  prevented  the  offer 
of  it  ! '  He  dreaded  the  plunge  into  the  difficulties  of  a  new 
position.  He  feared,  above  all,  '  the  "  functional  weakness  " 
that  grows  up  in  high  ecclesiastical  situations,  and  destroys 
all  that  was  sincere  and  natural  in  the  former  self.'  '  I  feel,' 
he  adds  to  Lady  Augusta, 

'that  it  will  be  a  constant  struggle  to  make  head  against 
it.  But  in  that  struggle  I  shall  now  have  your  help.  If  it 
be  possible  to  be  proof  against  this  temptation,  perhaps  it 
will  be  worth  all  the  misgivings  that  the  Deanery  will  have 
caused  to  me  and  my  friends.  My  dear  father  was  far 
more  useful  as  a  bishop  from  carrying  into  the  office  quali- 
ties so  unlike  what  are  usually  found  there.  May  I  be  able 
to  follow  in  his  footsteps  ! ' 


CHAP.  XX  HIS  REGRETS  AND  FEARS 


145 


Round  his  home  at  Oxford  his  affections  were  closely 
twined.    '  To  leave  this  dear  house,'  he  tells  Lady  Augusta, 

'  will  be  a  Paradise  Lost.  May  it  be  with  us  as  with  those 
two  who, 

Hand  in  hand,  with  wandering  steps  and  slow. 

Through  Eden  took  their  solitary  way. 

Some  natural  tears  they  dropped,  but  wiped  them  soon, 

and  in  the  wilderness  of  Westminster  we  shall  find  our 
Paradise  Regained.' 

As  though  to  complete  the  severance  with  his  old  life, 
his  faithful  servant.  Waters,  who,  with  his  wife  and  children, 
had  lived  with  him  at  Oxford,  thought  that  he  would  be 
unable  to  accompany  him  to  London.  '  You  may  fancy,'  he 
writes  to  Lady  Augusta,  '  how  to  me  it  is  the  loss  of  so  far 
more  than  a  servant  —  a  real  friend  ;  and  then,  those  three 
dear  little  children  were  such  a  constant  delight  to  me.  I 
cannot  bear  to  think  of  their  passing  away  to  strangers.' 

In  the  midst  of  this  conflict  of  feeling  he  preached  his 
last  sermon  as  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History.  His 
whole  heart  is  thrown  into  the  farewell  words  on  '  Great 
Opportunities,'  ^  which  he  spoke  before  the  University,  in 
Christ  Church  Cathedral,  on  November  29th,  1863.  The 
sermon  was  written  '  in  the  odd  moments  which  I  can  snatch 
here  and  there.'  '  I  hated  it,'  he  tells  Pearson,  '  when  I  was 
writing  it,  but  when  once  I  began  to  preach  it,  it  carried  me 
away.'  All  the  emotions  that  stirred  the  very  depths  of  his 
soul  at  the  thought  of  passing  from  a  great  institution,  in 
which  he  had  formed  a  part,  and  with  which  many  happy 
memories  were  associated,  throb  through  his  parting  words. 
All  the  inmost  history  of  theological  controversies,  of  past 
and  present  academical  progress,  of  friendship  severed  or 
cemented,  may  be  read  between  the  lines.    The  sentences 

*  Great  Opportunities.    A  Farewell  Sermon.   London,  1863. 
VOL.  II  L 


146 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


thrill  and  tingle  with  warnings  from  the  past,  with  encourage- 
ment for  the  future,  with  eager  appeals  and  lofty  aspirations, 
with  all  the  fears  and  hopes  that  divided  his  own  breast.  It 
was  possible  to  read  in  the  future  '  nothing  but  a  dreary 
winter  of  unbelief,  which  is  to  be  the  beginning  of  the  end, 
and  to  shrivel  up  every  particle  of  spiritual  life.'  There 
was  a  real  '  danger  to  the  Church  of  England  of  losing  for 
ever  the  noble  ambition  that  faith  and  freedom,  truth  and 
goodness,  may  yet  be  reconciled.'  But  yet,  through  all  the 
possibilities  and  dangers,  there  shone 

'the  glorious  prospect  to  be  spoken  of,  if  never  hereafter 
in  this  place,  yet  in  other  spheres,  if  God  so  please,  and 
before  other  hearers  so  long  as  life  and  strength  shall  last  — 
the  glorious  prospect  to  be  found  in  the  conviction  that  in  the 
religion  of  Christ  better  and  better  understood,  in  the  mind 
and  words  and  work  of  Christ  more  and  more  fully  per- 
ceived, lies  the  best  security  .  .  .  for  the  things  which  be- 
long, not  to  our  peace  only,  but  to  the  peace  of  universal 
Christendom.' 

At  the  moment  when  Stanley  preached  his  farewell 
sermon  his  theological  opponents  had  succeeded  in  striking 
off  his  name  from  the  list  of  Select  Preachers.  For  nine 
years  his  voice  was  to  be  silenced  in  the  University  pulpit. 
To  himself,  and  to  many  of  those  who  heard  him,  the 
thought  was  present  that  he  might  be  speaking  for  the  last 
time  in  that  place.  The  opportunity  was  a  great  one,  and 
it  was  made  the  most  of  by  the  preacher.  Two  letters  may 
be  quoted  to  illustrate  the  effect  which  the  farewell  pro- 
duced upon  his  hearers. 

The  first  is  a  letter  from  Dr.  Liddell. 

'  Christ  Church,  Oxford :  November  29,  1863. 

'  My  best  and  dearest  Friend,  —  How  have  you  torn  open 
afresh  all  the  wounds  which  the  first  news  of  your  depar- 
ture caused  !    I  can  scarcely  see  to  write  —  for  tears. 

'And  how  nobly  have  you  avenged  the  friends  who 


CHAP.  XX  H/S  FAREWELL  SERMON 


147 


would  fain  have  continued  you  in  the  office  of  teaching 
good  and  giving  true  glory  to  God  in  this  place.  I  wish 
for  no  other  punishment  upon  those  who  have  closed  our 
pulpits  against  you  (for  the  present  —  not  for  long,  I  am 
confident)  than  that  they  should  have  heard  you  to-day. 
You  must  print. 

'  Yours  ever  most  affectionately, 

'H.  G.  L.' 

The  second  letter  is  from  one  of  the  best-known  and 
most  distinguished  among  the  London  clergymen  of  to-day, 
who  at  that  time  held  a  country  living,  and  who  writes  to 
thank  Stanley  for 

'  that  noble  farewell  sermon  at  Christ  Church.  As  an  Oxford 
man,  a  Christ  Church  man,  a  young  man,  and,  therefore,  as 
one  specially  therein  addressed,  I  cannot  resist  writing  to 
say  how  very  deeply  I  have  felt  every  word  of  it.  You 
have  been,  and  you  are  being,  most  deeply  useful  to  me, 
and  I  feel  that  I  must  give  expression  to  my  feelings  and 
tell  you  so.  You  will  not,  I  am  sure,  suspect  me  of  any 
other  motive  in  writing  thus  to  you.  Oxford  was  utterly 
wasted  by  me,  and  worse.  I  knew  not  then  in  any  degree 
the  things  which  belonged  to  my  peace ;  but,  thank  God, 
bitterly  as  I  regret  that  time,  there  is  a  living,  working 
present  —  perhaps  a  future,  in  which  to  live  and  work  for 
God  and  truth. 

'Though  I  could  write  much,  I  shall  not  write  more,  as 
my  sole  object  was  to  express  a  gratitude  to  you  which 
I  have  for  some  time  been  feeling  —  as  a  private  in  your 
regiment  to  give  at  least  my  little  cheer  to  my  General.' 

In  the  struggle  of  conflicting  feeling  through  which 
Stanley  was  passing  he  found  in  his  future  wife  his 
strongest  stay  and  support.  To  her  he  turned  for  that 
sympathy  which  no  other  living  person  could  minister,  and 
which  she  was  peculiarly  qualified  to  give  him.  '  You  feel 
no  doubt,  as  I  do,'  he  writes  to  Lady  Augusta  Bruce, 

*.  .  .  a  dim  mysterious  feeling,  as  of  gradually  drawing 
nearer  to  the  confines  of  a  new  world.  I  have  often 
thought,  and  I  remember  telling  the  Queen,  in  speaking  of 
the  marriage  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  that  marriage  is  the 


I4^>  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1863 


only  event  in  modern  life  which  corresponds  to  what 
baptism  was  in  the  ancient  Church  — a  second  birth,  a  new 
creation,  old  things  passing  away,  all  things  becoming  new. 
Oh,  let  us  both  look  forward  to  a  new  flight  upwards ! 
Old  things,  indeed,  will  not  pass  away,  but  they  will  be 
transfigured.  I  feel  as  if  this  double  move  must  indeed  be 
the  crisis  of  my  life,  in  which  I  must  either  be  extinguished 
by  the  mere  greatness  of  the  event,  or  be  made  more  useful 
to  my  Church  and  countr)-  than  I  have  ever  been  before. 

'  You  must  be  my  wings.  I  shall  often  flag  and  be 
dispirited ;  but  you,  now,  as  my  dear  mother  formerly, 
must  urge  me  on,  and  bid  me  not  despair  when  the  world 
seems  too  heavy  a  burden  to  be  struggled  against.  Many 
and  many  will  be  the  talks,  if  you  will  let  me  have  them 
with  you,  like  that  which  we  had  on  our  first  Sunday  — 
Sunday  week. 

'  I  had  my  lecture  to-day  again.  You  will  not  wonder 
that,  when  I  looked  round  on  their  faces,  and  felt  that, 
after  the  end  of  this  short  course,  I  shall  address  neither 
them  nor  any  Oxford  generation  again,  my  heart  sank 
within  me.  IBut  I  felt  that  the  thought  gave  new  force  to 
my  words,  both  as  I  spoke  and  as  they  listened.  .  .  .' 

How  readily  Lady  Augusta  sympathised  with  his 
feelings,  how  singularly  adapted  she  was  to  be  the  partner 
of  his  hopes  and  aspirations,  and  with  what  feminine 
instinct  she  ministered  the  support  and  encouragement 
that  he  always  needed,  is  known  to  all  who  met  her  as  Lady 
Augusta  Stanley.  The  spirit  in  which  both  husband  and 
wife  entered  upon  their  married  life  is  forcibly  illustrated 
by  the  following  extract  from  one  of  her  letters,  and  from 
Stanley's  answer.  Lady  Augusta  writes  to  him  from 
St.  James's  Palace  during  the  weeks  of  despondency  and 
misgiving  which  closed  his  career  at  Oxford  : 

.  .  I  did  not  sleep  very  well,  and  happening  to  wan- 
der into  my  darling  brother's  sitting-room,  which  I  now 
occupy,  at  an  unnaturally  early  hour,  I  was  startled  by  the 
picture  which  suddenly  offered  itself  to  my  gaze.  The  sky 
was  crimson,  and  against  it,  in  the  clear  atmosphere  of 
early  morning,  the  towers  of  Westminster  and  the  whole 


CHAP.  XX  ENTERING  ON  A  NEW  LIFE 


149 


group  of  those  beautiful  buildings  stood  out  in  the  most 
perfect  distinctness.  It  seemed  as  though  not  a  detail  of 
the  architecture  were  lost ;  and  yet,  near  and  vivid  as  it  was, 
there  was  something  so  mysterious  and  impressive  and 
solemn  in  the  silent  beauty  of  the  scene,  that  it  seemed 
more  like  a  vision  of  the  Holy  City  than  anything  earthly 
or  material.  I  sat  and  watched  it  till  the  glowing  light  of 
this  glorious  dawn  had  melted  into  the  light  of  day,  and 
the  vision  had  passed  away. 

'  Need  I  tell  you,  my  beloved,  with  what  thoughts  and 
aspirations  and  earnest  prayers  my  heart  was  filled,  or 
how  blessed  were  the  moments  I  thus  spent  within  sight  of 
our  home,  on  which  may  God  our  Father  grant  that  a  light 
more  beautiful  still,  a  halo  more  sacred  and  more  holy, 
may  rest  for  ever  and  ever }  I  cannot  describe  my  thank- 
fulness for  the  accident  that  brought  me  where  I  was,  or 
the  impression  that  has  been  left  on  my  mind.  That 
one  bright  spot  amidst  the  surrounding  darkness,  and 
the  nature  of  the  light,  so  soft  and  mellow  and  diffusive, 
warming  and  gladdening  and  vivifying  all  round.  So 
may  your  home  be,  my  beloved,  and  may  the  peace  and  joy 
and  affection  that  reign  there  cheer,  and  lighten,  and  raise, 
and  soften  the  hearts  that  are  brought,  in  whatever  degree, 
within  its  influence !  "  And  the  city  had  no  need  of  the 
sun,  neither  of  the  m.oon,  to  lighten  it ;  for  the  glory  of 
God  did  lighten  it,  and  the  Lamb  is  the  light  thereof."  .  .  .' 

To  this  letter  Stanley  replies  from  Windsor,  where  he 
had  been  summoned  to  preach  before  the  Queen  : 

'  What  a  beautiful  vision  you  send  me  !  It  cheers  me, 
for  I  needed  cheering.  .  .  .  These  troubles,  no  doubt,  are 
only  for  the  moment,  and  a  year  hence  will  be  but  small 
specks.  Still,  I  cannot  help  being  depressed  by  them  at  a 
time  when  the  duty  and  wisdom  of  leaving  Oxford  are  so 
much  questioned  by  so  many  of  my  best  friends.  Let  us 
hope  that  your  glimpse  of  the  Abbey  may  be  a  type  of 
that  which  is  to  be.  My  dear  mother  was  very  fond  of  the 
text,  "  Unto  the  godly  there  ariseth  up  light  in  the  dark- 
ness." "Not,"  she  used  to  say,  "that  we  are  'the  godly,' 
but  still  in  all  our  darkness  a  light  has  arisen."  To  me, 
doubtless,  in  this  darkness,  such  as  it  is,  you,  and  your  love, 
are  the  light  that  has  arisen  up.   Under  any  circumstances. 


I  50  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STAiYLEY  1863 

I  should  have  had  the  same  self-reproach  and  grief  at 
making  the  great  change  of  a  well-known  sphere  for  one 
full  of  untried  difificulties  ;  but  it  might  have  been  that  I 
should  have  had  no  one  to  give  me  the  hope  of  a  new  light 
dawning  on  my  new  life,  such  as  I  now  have.' 

In  November  1863  came  the  news  of  the  alarming 
illness  of  Loi'd  Elgin,  the  Governor-General  of  India,  and 
the  brother  of  Lady  Augusta  Bruce.  The  news  was 
followed  early  in  the  next  month  by  the  intelligence  of  his 
death.  The  loss  seemed  at  once  to  sever  yet  another  link 
with  the  past,  and  to  weave  another  strand  into  the  bond 
that  was  to  unite  Stanley  and  Lady  Augusta  together  in 
the  future.  'To  me,'  writes  Stanley,  'it  is  a  mournful 
pleasure  that  I  have  now  a  right  to  be  a  comfort  to  you. 
You  know  that  I  felt  it  to  be  so  in  the  June  of  last  year. 
How  much  more  so  now.'' ' 

The  death  of  Lord  Elgin  not  only  postponed  the 
wedding  from  December  i6th  to  the  23rd,  but  rendered  it 
necessary  that  the  ceremony,  if  it  took  place,  as  pre- 
viously arranged,  in  Westminster  Abbey,  should  be  as 
private  as  possible.  No  alteration  in  the  place  was,  how- 
ever, made.    'I  am  so  glad,'  Stanley  tells  his  future  wife, 

' .  .  .  that  you  still  hold  to  the  marriage  in  the  Abbey.  It 
might  be  absolutely  private,  of  course  —  all  music  and  show 
dispensed  with,  and  as  few  as  possible  present.  But  it  is 
for  us  the  most  domestic,  and  therefore  the  most  private, 
place ;  and  I  must  confess  that  even  the  Abbey  would  be 
doubly  sanctified  in  my  eyes  if  it  were  made  the  scene  of 
this  blessed  event.  "  Through  the  grave  and  gate  of  death  " 
indeed  we  shall  pass,  if-  God  so  will,  to  "a  joyful  resurrec- 
tion "  of  a  new  life  ;  and  for  this  end,  what  can  be  more 
fitted  than  that  Church  of  Tombs  ' 

On  December  22nd,  1863,  on  the  evening  before  the 
marriage,  Stanley  wrote  to  Hugh  Pearson  : 

'  I  fill  up  a  few  vacant  moments  by  a  few  words  to  you, 
best  and  dearest  of  friends,  on  the  eve  of  this  great  change. 


CHAP.  XX  FIRST  SERMON  AS  DEAN  151 

You  know,  as  none  knows,  what  it  has  cost  me  to  reach 
this  point.  But  all  misgivings  are  over.  So  much  of  such 
various  kinds  has  led  me  on  to  this  event  that,  if  ever  any 
human  transaction  can  be  thought  to  be  predestined,  it  is 
this. 

'  I  foresee  a  stormy  time  at  Westminster,  more  stormy 
even  than  was  Oxford.  But  I  am  in  muchf  better  heart 
about  it  than  I  was.' 

At  Westminster  the  elements  of  storm  had  already 
gathered.  One  of  the  most  learned  and  respected  of  the 
Canons,  Dr.  Wordsworth,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  felt 
it  his  duty  to  publish  his  protest  against  Stanley's  appoint- 
ment to  the  Deanery,  and  to  preach  against  it  from  the 
pulpit  of  the  Abbey.  '  Well,'  wrote  the  Dean-elect  to  his 
sister  Mary,  '  I  am  very  glad  that  the  Pope  should  have 
a  respite.'  Honouring,  as  he  did,  the  apostolic  zeal  and 
saintly  character  of  his  assailant,  he  was  not  provoked  into 
a  war  of  words.  '  Perhaps,'  he  writes  to  Lady  Augusta,  '  it 
is  to  be  answered  by  a  calm  reply,  certainly  by  an  invita- 
tion to  dinner  on  the  first  opportunity.'  In  his  installation 
sermon,  preached  at  Westminster  on  January  loth,  1864, 
he  alludes  to  the  inauguration  by  the  protesting  Canon  of 
'  the  adventurous  movement  for  the  spiritual  aid  of  West- 
minster.' He  thus  explains  the  allusion,  when  sending  a 
copy  of  the  sermon  to  M.  de  Circourt : 

'  Dr.  Wordsworth  published  a  protest  against  my  ap- 
pointment filled  with  the  most  reckless  misrepresentations. 
I  thought  that  the  only  notice  which  it  was  fitting  for  me 
to  take  of  this  attack  was  to  pronounce  an  eulogy  upon 
that  part  of  his  conduct  which  really  deserved  it.' 

Thus  met,  Dr.  Wordsworth's  protest  became  the  first 
step  in  the  cordial  and  friendly  intercourse  between  Dean 
and  Canon. 

As  his  first  task  in  entering  on  his  new  duties  at  West- 
minster was  to  keep  peace,  so  his  last  effort  at  Oxford  had 


152 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1863 


been  to  make  it.  In  December  1863,  on  the  eve  of  leaving 
the  University,  he  sought  an  interview  with  Dr.  Pusey. 
His  object  was  to  induce  him  to  withdraw  from  the  hostile 
attitude  which  the  Professor  of  Hebrew  had  adopted 
towards  Professor  Jowett.  He  followed  up  the  personal 
interview  by  a  long  letter.  In  it  he  endeavoured  to  meet 
Dr.  Pusey's  objections  to  the  three  passages  in  the  '  Com- 
mentary on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  '  on  which  the 
opposition  was  mainly  founded.  The  action  and  the  argu- 
ment are  so  characteristic  of  Stanley  that  the  letter  may 
be  quoted  at  length  : 

'  I  hope  that  it  is  only  in  accordance  with  the  wish, 
which  you  so  kindly  expressed  the  other  day,  to  do  justice 
to  one  who  has  been  much  misunderstood,  and  who  has 
suffered  in  consequence,  if  I  trouble  you  with  a  few  words 
on  the  three  passages  which  you  mentioned  as  occupying 
the  chief  place  in  your  objections  to  his  book:  (i)  the 
notice  of  the  discrepancies  of  the  narratives  of  St.  Paul's 
conversion  ;  (2)  the  explanations  of  opiaOevro';  in  Rom. 
i.  4 ;  ^  (3)  and  of  6  cov  iirl  ttuvtcov  ^  in  Rom.  ix.  5. 

'  I  have  since  looked  again  at  the  passages,  and  also  at 
the  explanations  of  them  elsewhere,  and  I  am  still  more 
confirmed  in  the  opinion,  which  I  ventured  to  express  to 
you  the  other  day,  that  his  view  in  each  of  the  passages  is 
either  such  as  has  been  stated  by  distinguished  theo- 
logians whom  any  English  university  would  be  glad  to 
honour,  or  else  is  different  from  what  you  had  conceived  it 
to  be. 

'  In  the  first,  I  see  that  Paley  states  the  principle  (in 
Part  iii.  Chapter  i.  of  his  "  Evidences  ")  of  recognising  the 
differences  in  the  sacred  narratives  so  broadly  as  fully  to 
cover  the  case  in  the  Acts  to  which  Jowett  refers.  And  I 
observe  that  the  very  case  is  referred  to,  and  the  discrep- 
ancies fully  acknowledged,  in  books  which,  whatever  may 
be  our  individual  opinions  as  to  their  merits,  have  an 
absolutely  universal  reception  in  the  English  Church  —  I 

'  Translated  in  the  Authorised  Version,  '  declared  (margin,  determined')  to 
be  the  Son  of  God.' 

'  Translated  in  the  Authorised  Version,  '  Who  is  over  all,  God  blessed  for 
ever.' 


CHAP.  XX   EFFORT  TO  MAKE  PEACE  AT  OXFORD       1 53 


mean  Howson's  "Life  of  St.  Paul,"  and  the  Notes  on  the 
Greek  Testament  by  the  present  Dean  of  Canterbury.^ 

'In  the  second  case  (Rom.  i.  4)  it  is  merely  the  expla- 
nation of  the  word  6pia-6ivTO<;.  He  is  unwilling  to  desert 
what  seems  to  be  its  recognised  sense.  But  he  sees  no  such 
contradiction  as  you  seem  to  suppose  between  this  sense 
and  the  passage  in  Col.  i.  16.  On  the  contrary,  he  expressly 
states  that  they  can  easily  be  reconciled. 

'  In  the  third  case  (Rom.  ix.  5)  he  gives  no  decided 
opinion,  but,  as  I  said  then,  though  doubtful  whether  I 
remembered  rightly,  states  the  arguments  for  and  against 
the  received  interpretation.  But,  even  had  he  taken  the 
other  view,  that  surely  might  be  tolerated  without  offence 
in  a  Greek  Professor  now  which  was  solemnly  adopted  by 
Erasmus,  without  offence,  in  his  time. 

*  I  am  not  propping  my  own  argument  with  these,  or 
any  other,  of  Jowett's  views.  Our  tastes  and  pursuits  are 
probably  as  different  as  those  of  any  two  men  in  this  place. 
Still  less  do  I  expect  that  you  will  agree  with  him,  or  with 
any  of  those  whom  I  have  cited  as  sanctioning  his  views. 
But  after  the  opening  which  you  kindly  allowed  to  me,  I 
cannot  leave  Oxford  without  entreating  you  to  consider 
whether  the  passages  which  you  mentioned  to  me  are  a 
sufficient  ground  for  the  strong  opinions  which  you  enter- 
tain, and  the  strong  measures  which  I  believe  that  you 
have  taken  against  a  person  who,  on  these  points,  only 
holds  what  in  others  we  pass  by  unnoticed. 

'  I  have  dwelt  on  these  passages  because  they  are  the 
only  ones  which  you  mentioned  to  me.  But  I  believe  that 
the  same  may  be  said,  in  great  measure,  of  the  part  of  the 
book  (the  Essay  on  the  Atonement)  which  has  given  such 
offence  to  so  many  excellent  persons,  who  are  not  aware 
that  St.  Anselm  has  virtually  said  the  same  thing  in  the 
eleventh  century,  and  my  own  respected  predecessor^''  only 
two  years  ago. 

'  If  it  were  mainly  a  matter  personally  affecting  Jowett 
himself,  I  should  not  feel  the  matter  so  keenly.  But  I  am 
convinced  that  no  more  serious  blow  can  be  inflicted  on 
the  permanent  interests  of  religion  in  this  place  than  by  the 
continuance  of  a  hostile  position  towards  him  on  the  part 
of  persons  like  yourself.' 


9  Dr.  Alford. 


10  Dr.  Trench. 


154 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


With  this  attempt  to  conciliate  contending  parties  at 
Oxford  Stanley's  life  as  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History 
comes  to  a  fitting  close.  On  December  23rd,  1863,  he  was 
married  to  Lady  Augusta  Bruce  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
A  fortnight  later,  on  Saturday,  January  9th,  1864,  he  was 
installed  as  Dean  of  the  same  Collegiate  Church.  As  soon 
as  the  installation  service  was  ended  a  formal  Chapter  was 
held. 

'They  were  all  there,  Wordsworth  included  (who,  how- 
ever, absented  himself  from  church  both  Saturday  and 
Sunday).  I  shook  hands  with  him  cordially,  and  he  with 
me. 

'  I  confess  that  I  felt  no  elation,  nothing  but  depression, 
at  the  prospect  before  me.  It  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  were 
going  down  alive  into  the  sepulchre. 

'I  had  a  long  conversation  with  Lord  J.  Thynne,^^  very 
courteous  and  sensible,  but  opening  a  vista  of  interminable 
questions  of  the  most  uninteresting  kind,  for  the  discussion 
of  which  I  felt  totally  incapable.  I  repeat  that,  as  far  as 
the  actual  work  of  the  Dean  is  concerned,  it  is  far  more 
unsuited  to  me  than  that  of  a  bishop.  To  lose  one's 
time  in  Confirmations  is  bad,  but  to  lose  it  in  leases  and 
warming-plans    is  worse. 

'  However,  the  deed  is  done,  and  my  useful  life  I  con- 
sider to  be  closed,  except  so  far  as  I  can  snatch  portions 
from  the  troubles  of  the  office.' 

With  such  feelings  Stanley  entered  upon  the  new  field 
that  was  opened  to  him  at  Westminster  —  a  field  which  to 
his  first  sight  seemed  barren,  but  which  he  made  in  after 
years  so  fertile  in  opportunities  and  so  rich  in  its  yield  of 
varied  influences. 

The  Senior  Canon  and  Sub-Dean  of  Westminster. 

Plans  for  heating  the  Abbey  were  being  discussed  by  the  Chapter. 


CHAP.  XXI 


'ESSAVS  AND  REVIEWS' 


155 


CHAPTER  XXI 
1864-74 

FINAL  JUDGMENT  ON  'ESSAYS  AND  REVIEWS,'  FEBRUARY 
1864  — REFUSAL  OF  HIGH  CHURCH  LEADERS  TO  PREACH 
IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  — STANLEY'S  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS 
THEOLOGICAL  AND  ECCLESIASTICAL  CONTROVERSIES  — 
'ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  STATE,'  1870— SPEECHES  IN  CON- 
VOCATION ON  '  ESSAYS  AND  REVIEWS,'  ON  BISHOP  COLENSO, 
ON  RITUALISM,  ON  THE  PUBLIC  WORSHIP  REGULATION 
BILL,  ON  THE  REVISION  OF  THE  AUTHORISED  VERSION, 
ON  THE  ATHANASIAN  CREED  — THE  PAN-ANGLICAN  SYNOD 
AND  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY,  1867  — DR.  VANCE  SMITH, 
1870  — SELECT  PREACHERSHIP  AT  OXFORD,  1872 

'  Happy  New  Year  indeed !  I  only  dread  the  rapid 
flight  of  time.'  So  Stanley  writes  on  January  ist,  1864, 
'during  that  short  period  of  perfect  bliss  which  is  only 
granted  to  mortals  once  in  a  lifetime.'  Foreseeing  the 
storms  that  were  gathering  round  him  at  Westminster, 
perplexed  by  the  uncertainties  of  his  new  position,  he 
turned  to  his  wife  for  that  encouragement  and  support 
which,  amid  all  the  possibilities  of  the  future,  seemed 
alone  to  be  secure.  He  writes  of  her  to  J.  C.  Shairp  'as 
the  chief  earthly  stay  for  my  coming  pilgrimage.'  'I  can- 
not but  feel,'  he  adds, 

'  that  the  day  may  have  come  when  the  shades  of  failure 
and  disappointment  are  to  close  round  me,  as  they  have 
closed  round  so  many  others.  But  if  I  am  to  struggle  on- 
wards and  upwards  yet,  it  will  be,  under  God,  through  her.' 

The  day  after  his  installation  (Sunday,  January  loth, 
1864)  he  delivered  his  first  sermon  in  Westminster  Abbey 
as  Dean.    '  I  preached,'  he  writes  to  the  Bishop  of  London, 


156 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


who  had  written  to  congratulate  him  upon  the  impression 
which  he  had  produced, 

'  with  the  utmost  discomfort  to  myself,  from  the  feeling 
that  I  was  probably  neither  heard  nor  understood,  and 
could  not  help  contrasting  the  occasion  with  that  of  my 
farewell  sermon  at  Oxford.  Therefore,  I  am  very  glad  to 
hear  that  anyone  was  pleased,  and  am  encouraged  by  your 
letter  to  print  it,  concerning  which  I  had  serious  doubts.'  ^ 

Cheered  by  his  success,  and  supported  by  'the  good 
Angel  whom  I  have  always  at  my  side,'  he  began,  as  he 
writes  to  the  present  Dean  of  Westminster  at  the  end  of 
January  1864,  'to  see  hopes  breaking  through  the  darkness.' 
'And  yet,'  he  adds  in  the  same  breath,  'I  hardly  dare  to 
look  forward  to  the  future.' 

In  the  ancient  instrument  to  which  he  declared  his 
assent  at  his  installation  occurred  a  memorable  phrase.  '  I 
am  greatly  struck,'  he  tells  Pearson,  'by  the  fact  that  I  am 
set  here  "for  the  enlargement  of  the  Christian  Church."  ' 
To  maintain  that  degree  of  enlargement  which  was  already 
secured  to  the  Church  by  its  union  with  the  State,  and  to 
widen  its  borders  so  that  it  might  more  worthily  fulfil  its 
mission  as  the  National  Church,  were  the  two  objects  to 
which  he  devoted  all  his  efforts.  In  this  double  meaning, 
the  enlargement  of  the  Church  was  the  political  aim  of  his 
Churchmanship,  and  the  drift  of  his  sermons,  speeches,  and 
writings.  In  his  increased  opportunities  of  preserving  the 
comprehensiveness,  and  of  extending  the  limits,  of  the 
Church  he  found  the  brightest  side  of  his  new  position  ;  in 
the  obstacles  and  opposition  that  he  encountered  lay  its 
darkest  clouds. 

The  crisis  was  singularly  unpropitious  for  the  cause  on 
which  he  had  embarked.  Religious  public  opinion  was 
setting  in  the  opposite  direction.    The  panics  created  by 

1  The  sermon  was  afterwards  printed :  A  Reasonable,  Holy,  and  Living 
Sacrifice.    London,  1864.    (Reprinted  in  Sermons  on  Special  Occasions.) 


CHAP.  XXI 


'ESSAYS 


AND  REVIEWS' 


*  Essays  and  Reviews,'  and  by  Bishop  Colenso's  work  on 
the  Pentateuch,  were  still  gathering  fresh  strength.  Few 
persons  could  wholly  defend  either  publication,  or  deny 
that  their  tendency  was,  in  some  respects,  mischievous. 
In  the  heat  of  discussion  mistakes  were  made  on  both 
sides,  and,  as  the  two  parties  drifted  more  widely  apart, 
it  might  seem  to  many  that  religious  men  became  less 
liberal,  and  liberal  men  less  religious. 

On  February  8th,  1864,  the  long-expected  judgment  of 
the  Privy  Council  was  delivered  in  two  of  the  prosecutions 
which  that  publication  had  occasioned.  Dr.  Williams  had 
been  prosecuted  by  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  Mr.  Wilson  by 
a  private  clergyman,  the  Rev.  James  Fendall.  Both  defen- 
dants were  accused  of  denying  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy 
Scripture,  and  Mr.  Wilson  was  further  charged  with  denial 
of  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment.  Dr.  Lushington, 
the  Dean  of  Arches,  holding  the  charges  to  be  proved, 
sentenced  the  two  clergymen  to  be  suspended  for  a  year. 
This  judgment  of  the  inferior  Court  was  now  reversed 
on  appeal  by  the  judgment  of  the  Privy  Council.  The 
only  material  before  the  Court  was  contained  in  the  specific 
passages  extracted  from  the  writings  of  the  two  Essayists  for 
the  purpose  of  the  prosecution.  The  Privy  Council  decided 
that  the  opinions  expressed  in  these  extracts  by  Dr.  Wil- 
liams and  Mr.  Wilson  on  the  three  questions  of  justifica- 
tion, inspiration,  and  eternal  punishment,  were  not  contra- 
dicted by,  or  inconsistent  with,  the  Articles  and  formularies 
of  the  Church  of  England.  Stanley,  as  has  been  said,  was 
present  in  court  on  the  occasion  of  the  acquittal  of  the 
Essayists.  '  At  last ' —  to  quote  his  subsequent  description 
of  the  scene  in  the  '  Edinburgh  Review  '  — 2 

'the  judgment  to  which  the  Church,  not  of  England  only, 
but  of  foreign  nations  also,  had  been  looking  forward  with 

«  The  Three  Pastorals.    July  1864. 


158 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


intense  expectation,  was  pronounced.  No  one  who  was 
present  can  forget  the  interest  with  which  the  audience  in 
that  crowded  council-chamber  listened  to  sentence  after 
sentence  as  they  rolled  along  from  the  smooth  and  silvery 
tongue  of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  enunciating,  with  a  lucidity 
which  made  it  seem  impossible  that  any  other  statement 
of  the  case  was  conceivable,  and  with  a  studied  moderation 
of  language  which  at  times  seemed  to  border  on  irony, 
first,  the  principles  on  which  the  judgment  was  to  proceed, 
and  then  the  examination,  part  by  part  and  word  by  word, 
of  the  three  charges  that  remained,  till  at  the  close  not  one 
was  left,  and  the  appellants  remained  in  possession  of  the 
field.' 

'Thus  ends  the  panic  of  "Essays  and  Reviews,'"  is 
Stanley's  contemporary  comment  to  Pearson,  'by  establish- 
ing the  legality  of  two  great  doctrines  for  which  the  prophets 
have  contended  against  the  whole  bench  of  bishops.'  In  this 
sanguine  forecast  he  was  mistaken.  The  panic  was  rather 
increased  than  stayed  by  a  decision  which  the  opponents 
of  'Essays  and  Reviews'  believed  to  be  'soul-destroying.' 
A  letter  addressed  to  the  '  Record '  by  Dr.  Pusey  gave  the 
signal  for  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  between  High 
Churchmen  and  Low  Churchmen.  At  a  meeting  held  in 
Oxford  a  Declaration  of  Faith  was  formulated,  declaring 

'our  firm  belief  that  the  Church  of  England  and  Ireland,  in 
common  with  the  whole  Catholic  Church,  maintains  without 
reserve  or  qualification  the  inspiration  and  Divine  autho- 
rity of  the  whole  canonical  Scriptures,  as  not  only  contain- 
ing, but  being,  the  Word  of  God  ;  and  further  teaches,  in  the 
words  of  our  blessed  Lord,  that  the  "punishment  "  of  the 
"cursed,"  equally  with  the  "life"  of  the  "righteous,"  is 
"  everlasting." ' 

This  document  was  sent  round  to  every  clergyman  in 
England,  Wales,  and  Ireland,  accompanied  by  a  letter  en- 
treating him  to  sign  it  'for  the  love  of  God.' 

It  vv^as  at  this  stormy  crisis  that  Stanley  wrote  to  repre- 


CHAP.  XXI       PREACHERS  AT  WESTMINSTER 


sentatives  both  of  the  High  Church  and  EvangeUcal  par- 
ties, asking  them  to  preach  at  the  Special  Services  which 
he  was  preparing  to  hold  in  the  Abbey  on  Sunday  evenings. 
The  leading  Low  Churchmen  accepted  his  invitation  ;  but 
Keble,  Pusey,  and  Liddon  all  declined.  Stanley's  corre- 
spondence with  them  strikingly  illustrates  how  widely  men 
who  pursue  the  same  object  may  differ  as  to  the  means  for 
its  attainment.  It  will  be  seen  that  Keble  and  Liddon 
refused  at  once,  and  that  Pusey  only  decided  to  do  so  after 
long  hesitation. 

Rev.  John  Keble  to  Dean  Stanley. 

'  Torquay:  March  lith,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Sir,  —  I  am  sincerely  obliged  by  your  kindness 
in  thinking  of  me  as  one  fit  to  be  applied  to  on  such  an 
occasion,  and  I  must  beg  Lady  Augusta,  with  yourself,  to 
accept  my  best  thanks  for  the  invitation  contained  in  your 
letter.  However,  under  any  circumstances  I  believe  I 
should  have  felt  that  I  must  decline  that  proposal,  because 
(among  other  reasons)  I  fear  that  I  could  not  make  myself 
heard  in  the  Abbey. 

'  But  I  should  not  be  dealing  quite  frankly  with  you  if 
I  did  not  add  (though  it  grieves  me  sorely  to  do  so)  that, 
were  I  to  accept  it,  it  would  be  in  discomfort  and  fear,  lest 
by  seeming  to  bear  with  doctrines  which  you  avowedly 
uphold,  and  which  I  believe  in  my  heart  to  contradict  the 
foundation  of  the  faith,  I  should  cause  harm  which  would 
far  outweigh  any  good  one  might  hope  to  do  by  preaching. 

'  I  am  sure  you  will  forgive  my  plain  speaking,  and  will 
believe  me  to  remain 

'  Your  obliged  and  faithful  servant, 

'].  Keble. 

'I  only  got  your  letter  this  morning.  The  delay  I  trust 
will  not  have  caused  you  inconvenience.' 

Dr.  Pusey  to  Dean  Stanley. 

'  Christ  Church  :  Feb.  23. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  —  First  let  me  thank  you  and 
Lady  Augusta  sincerely  for  your  personal  kindness.  I 


l6o  LIFE  OF  DEAN'  STANLEY  1864 


wrote  a  letter  to  you  on  the  day  upon  which  I  received 
yours,  and  then  kept  it  back  (you  will  be  surprised  to  hear) 
in  sheer  perplexity.  .  .  . 

'We  are  at  a  critical  moment.  I,  as  you  may  have 
heard,  have  joined  those,  whether  Evangelicals  or  others, 
who  think  it  necessary  that  the  Church  should  in  some 
way  reaffirm  the  doctrines  upon  which  doubt  has  been 
thrown  by  the  late  judgments.  Your  friends,  I  hear,  are 
rejoicing  in  it.  So  there  we  are  in  direct  antagonism. 
Some  to  whom  I  owe  great  deference  say  to  me,  "  I  con- 
fess that  I  should  feel  a  shock  at  your  preaching  at  the 
Abbey  at  this  juncture,  and  I  think  that  this  would  be  the 
feeling  of  many  people."  It  gives  an  appearance  of  unre- 
ality if  people,  who  are  at  that  moment  in  active  antago- 
nism on  what  they  believe  to  be  of  vital  moment,  unite  as 
if  there  were  nothing  at  issue  between  them. 

'  Then,  as  to  yourself,  my  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  I  have  felt 
that  it  was  almost  hypocrisy  to  talk  to  you  in  an  ordinary 
way,  and  say  nothing  of  what  was  in  the  depth  of  my  soul. 
And  as  it  would  have  been  impertinent  and  useless  to  say 
this,  I  have  kept  nearly  silent.  Painful  as  it  is,  some 
things  in  your  Jewish  History  I  thought  it  necessary  to 
remark  upon  in  my  notes  on  my  Lectures  on  Daniel.  Still 
more,  I  should  have  to  say  in  my  preface  that  we  have 
nothing  to  fear  from  assailants,  but  have  much  to  fear 
from  defenders.  You  seem  to  me  to  take  every  oppor- 
tunity of  committing  yourself  to  anyone  who  does  not 
believe  as  others.  I  know  not,  of  course,  how  much  you 
have  studied  Dr.  Colenso's  first  volume.  I  went  through 
it  with  my  evening  party,  and  never  met  with  anything 
more  stupid,  or  narrow,  or  blundering.  Yet  you  endorsed 
the  principles  of  a  book  which  was  frightfully  unsettling 
the  faith  of  the  lower  classes,  not  by  its  arguments,  but 
by  the  fact  that  a  bishop  pledged  his  character  that  the 
Pentateuch  was  incredible. 

*  I  believe  the  present  to  be  a  struggle  for  the  life  or 
death  of  the  English  Church,  and  what  you  believe  to  be 
for  life  I  believe  to  be  for  death  ;  and  you  think  the  same 
reciprocally  of  me. 

'  I  fear,  then,  lest  by  accepting  a  personal  token  of  con- 
fidence from  you,  in  offering  me  what  has  never  been  of- 
fered to  me  before  —  the  privilege  of  preaching  to  all  those 
souls  in  the  Abbey — I  should  be  confusing  people's  minds,  as 


CHAP.  XXI      CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  PUSEY 


l6l 


though  there  were  not  these  radical  differences  between  us ; 
and  this  would  be  aggravated  if  my  name'were  in  the  same 
cycle  as  some  of  your  friends.  People  might  ask,  "  What 
do  these  people  think  to  be  truth  ? "  I  have  been  guilty  of 
seeming  discourtesy  in  not  thanking  you  for  your  personal 
kindness,  but  I  expected  on  each  day  to  come  to  some 
conclusion  on  the  next,  or  the  day  after,  and  still  I  could 
not  decide  when  your  letter  came  this  morning. 
'  Believe  me, 

'  With  sincere  personal  regard, 

'  Yours  faithfully, 
'  E.  B.  PusEY.' 

Dean  Stanley  to  Dr.  Pusey. 

'  February  25,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Pusey,  —  I  have  to  thank  you  for  your 
great  kindness  and  frankness,  and  am  truly  touched  by  the 
perplexity  which  my  offer  has  caused  you. 

'  My  grounds  for  making  the  offer  were,  that  I  felt  it  to 
be  my  duty  as  D.  of  W.  to  give  to  every  preacher  of  eminence 
within  the  Church  the  opportunity  of  addressing  the  mixed 
congregations  assembled  in  the  Abbey,  and  so  of  convey- 
ing to  some  class  or  other  the  truths  they  most  needed 
to  hear.  It  was  not,  of  course,  my  object  to  place  these 
several  preachers  there  that  they  might  contradict  each 
other,  but  that  they  might  edify  the  congregation  as  far  as 
possible  in  the  truths  which  we  all  hold  together.  I  know 
well  that  you  would  powerfully  set  forth  such  truths  ;  and 
it  has  always  seemed  to  me  very  unjust  that  you  should 
have  been  excluded,  when  others  quite  as  extreme  on  either 
side  were  admitted,  and  I  therefore  lost  no  time  in  asking 
you  to  take  what  I  considered  to  be  your  due  part  in  these 
special  services. 

'  I  regret,  but  cannot  be  surprised  (after  what  I  have 
often  heard  you  say),  that  you  should  be  displeased  at  the 
recent  judgment,  which  to  me  appears  so  wise  and  just. 
But  I  cannot  see  that  this  divergence  makes  any  difference 
in  my  position,  or  in  yours,  with  regard  to  these  sermons.  I 
can  understand  that  you  might  feel  your  relations  altered 
towards  the  Church  itself,  whose  highest  tribunal  and  whose 
two  Primates  have  delivered  a  judgment  which  you  so 
much  deplore.  But  as  to  any  action  within  the  Church,  I 
cannot  recognise  any  further  difference  than  may  have 
VOL.  II  M 


1 62  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 


been  occasioned  by  the  divergence  which  existed  between 
us  at  the  time  of  the  Gorham  judgment,  and  which  was 
expressed  by  many  in  terms  at  least  as  strong  as  those 
which  you  use  on  the  present  occasion. 

'  I  confess  that  I  was  startled  and  pained  by  your  letter 
of  adhesion  to  a  newspaper  (you  will  forgive  me  for  saying 
what  I  am  sure  you  must  often  have  heard  said  by  others) 
of  so  scandalous  a  character  as  "The  Record."  But  again 
I  repeat  that  I  feel  myself  constrained  to  overlook  any 
particular  course  which  you  may  have  thought  it  right  to 
adopt,  in  consideration  of  the  points  on  which  we  are 
agreed,  and  of  the  common  standing  which  we  have  as 
clergymen  of  the  English  Church. 

'  I  would  fain  hope  that  these  common  grounds  counter- 
balance the  differences  which  separate  us ;  that  even 
these  differences  are  not  so  great  as  those  which  part  you 
from  the  unscrupulous  and  slanderous  journal  with  which, 
for  a  particular  purpose,  you  have  thought  it  right  to  com- 
bine. 

'With  regard  to  the  theological  differences  to  which 
you  so  kindly  allude,  and  especially  to  the  note  which  you 
mention  in  my  "  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church,"  I  will  only 
say  that  I  have  said  there  nothing,  in  principle,  beyond 
what  you  yourself  said  formerly  in  the  book  on  German 
Theology,  or  than  what  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  has  said 
in  his  recent  Charge.  At  any  rate,  they  cannot  affect  my 
wish  that  you  should  preach  in  the  Abbey. 

'  I  therefore  respectfully  and  for  your  own  sake  renew 
my  request,  in  the  name  of  our  common  Christianity  and 
our  common  Church,  that  you  will  allow  your  name  to 
appear  in  the  list  of  the  preachers  in  the  Abbey,  if  only  to 
show  that  there  are  still  grounds  of  union  left  for  clergymen 
of  the  Church  of  England  besides  those  of  a  common 
antipathy  and  common  fear,  and  that  there  are  subjects 
left  in  which  we  can  edify  the  vast  congregations  of  a  city 
like  London  without  attacking  each  other. 

'  Yours  sincerely, 

'A.  P.  Stanley.' 

Dr.  Pusey  to  Dean  Stanley. 

'  February  28,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  —  Can  you  tell  me  who  the  other 
preachers  are  whom  you  propose  to  invite  to  preach  at  the 


CHAP.  XXI       CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  PUSEY 


163 


Abbey  ?  I  know  that  you  sympathise  most  with  those 
most  opposite  to  my  belief.  And  yet  this  is  not  the  case 
of  persons  preaching  incidentally  in  the  same  church.  It 
is  a  cycle  of  preachers  —  one  system,  one  whole.  You 
appeal  to  me  kindly  in  the  name  of  "  our  common  Chris- 
tianity." Alas  !  I  do  not  know  what  the  common  Christian- 
ity of  myself  and  Professor  Jowett  is.  I  do  not  know  what 
single  truth  we  hold  in  common,  except  that  somehow  Jesus 
came  from  God,  which  the  Mohammedans  believe  too.  I 
do  not  think  that  Professor  Jowett  believes  our  Lord  to 
have  been  very  God,  or  God  the  Holy  Ghost  to  be  a  per- 
sonal being.  The  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  as  he  states 
it,  is  something  wholly  unmeaning.  Of  his  heart,  of  course, 
I  do  not  speak  ;  I  only  speak  of  his  writings. 

'  For  yeurself,  my  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  you  say  that  you 
have  said  nothing  in  principle  beyond  what  I  said  in  my 
books  when  I  was  twenty-eight.  Would  to  God  you  did 
not ! 

'  I  wrote  to  the  "  Record  "  because  I  wanted  to  unite  with 
the  party  who  take  it  in,  and  to  whom  I  had  access  through 
it.  I  dare  say  it  has  said  many  a  hard  thing  of  myself  and 
my  friends ;  no  one  can  suppose  that  I  endorse  these 
things.  But  I  must,  and  do,  join  heart  and  soul  with  those 
who  oppose  this  tide  of  rationalism.  Nothing,  of  course, 
but  the  deep  conviction  that  the  souls  of  the  young  and 
the  faith  were  imperilled  would  have  induced  me  to  unite 
in  the  prosecution  of  Professor  Jowett. 

'  Yours  faithfully, 

'  E.  B.  PusEY. 

'As  time  is  going  on,  you  had  better,  anyhow,  fill  up 
the  April  Sundays.' 

Dean  Stanley  to  Dr.  Ptisey. 

'  Deanery,  Westminster :  February  29,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Pusey,  —  I  have  not  framed  any  cycle 
beyond  April  and  May.  it  is,  properly  speaking,  informal 
for  me  to  announce  the  names  of  the  preachers  so  long 
beforehand.  But  you  can  know  the  names  privately,  if  it 
is  any  satisfaction  to  you. 

'  Those  for  April,  besides  yourself,  would  be  the  Arch- 
bishop of  York,  Canon  Stowell,  and  myself.  Those  for 
May,  the  Bishop  of  London,  Canon  Wordsworth,  Mr. 


H  2 


164 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Rowsell,  and  Mr.  Thorold.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
I  asked,  and  he  would  have  preached,  but  was  engaged. 

'  This  list  is,  perhaps,  sufficient  for  your  purpose,  as  it 
includes,  besides  others,  the  three  prelates  against  whose 
judgment  you  wish  to  protest,  and  myself,  against  whom 
you  seem  to  speak,  as  not  holding  any  common  Christian- 
ity with  yourself  —  at  least,  I  can  hardly  understand  your 
argument  otherwise. 

'  But  nothing  that  you  say  at  all  shakes  my  convic- 
tion that  we  have  a  common  Christianity,  and  that  it  is  my 
duty  to  request  you  to  preach.  Nor  can  I  well  apply  to 
any  other  quarter  for  a  preacher  till  I  have  had  a  defini- 
tive answer  from  yourself.  I  should  have  to  ask  persons 
whose  opinions  are  the  same  as  your  own,  or  stronger,  and 
I  should  almost  feel  bound  to  state  to  them  (if  y^ou  do  not 
consent)  what  has  passed  between  us,  lest  they  should  be 
inadvertently  led  into  a  course  which  you  —  with  whom, 
as  I  suppose,  they  would  wish  to  act  —  have  disapproved. 

'When  I  spoke  of  your  adhesion  to  the  "Record,"  I  did 
not,  of  course,  imagine  that  you  intended  to  endorse  its 
attacks  upon  yourself ;  but  I  venture  to  express  my  sur- 
prise that  you  should  scruple  about  preaching  in  the  same 
church  with  the  Archbishops  and  myself,  and  not  scruple 
about  making  an  ally  (without  a  word  of  justification)  of  a 
newspaper  which  notoriously  violates  the  first  principles  of 
Christian  truth  and  charity  every  week. 

'  I  do  not  enter  on  any  argument  as  to  your  statements 
respecting  Professor  Jowett.  But  you  must  not  construe 
my  silence  in  any  sense  as  an  acquiescence  in  any  part  of 
them. 

'  Once  more,  therefore,  I  will  ask  for  as  early  an  answer 
as  you  can  conveniently  give,  and  I  still  hope  that  it  may 
be  in  the  affirmative. 

'  Yours  sincerely, 

'A.  P.  Stanley.' 

Dr.  Piiscy  to  Demi  Stanley. 

'  March  5,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Stanley,  —  I  trust  that  I  have  not  caused 
you  inconvenience  by  the  difficulty  which  I  have  had  in 
making  up  my  mind.  It  would  have  been  a  glad  office  to 
me  to  preach  to  those  3,000,  if  so  be  that  God  would  have 
spoken  through  me  to  one  soul  effectively.   But  I  dare  not. 


CHAP.  XXI      CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  PUSEY  165 


'I  think  that  one  of  the  great  dangers  of  the  present 
day  is  to  conceive  of  matters  of  faith  as  if  they  were 
matters  of  opinion,  to  think  all  have  an  equal  chance  of 
being  right,  which  involves  this  —  that  there  is  no  faith  at 
all.  The  essence  of  your  scheme  seems  to  me  to  be  to 
exhibit  as  one  those  whose  differences  I  believe  to  be 
vital ;  and  so,  although  it  is  with  a  pang  that  I  relinquish 
the  offer  which  (differing  so  much  from  me)  you  kindly 
made  me  of  speaking  God's  truth  earnestly  to  all  those 
souls,  I  cannot  with  a  safe  conscience  accept  it. 

'  I  thank  you  for  your  personal  kindness,  and  remain 

'  Yours  sincerely, 

'E.  B.  PuSEY. 

'  I  write  in  pencil  in  the  train,  returning  from  my  preach- 
ing at  Cambridge,  to  save  the  midday  post  at  Oxford.' 

Dean  Stanley  to  Dr.  Pusey.^ 

•  (?)  March  6,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Dr.  Pusey,  —  I  cannot  close  this  correspondence 
without  expressing  my  regret  that  you  should  have  felt  it 
necessary  to  decline  my  request  that  you  would  preach  in 
the  Abbey.  It  has  been  a  satisfaction  to  me  to  have  had 
the  opportunity  of  endeavouring  to  end  the  exclusion 
under  which  you  have  hitherto  been  prevented  from  preach- 
ing on  these  occasions,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  sincere  sorrow 
that  you  should  think  it  right  thus  to  isolate  yourself  from 
the  great  mass  of  your  fellow-Churchmen,  and  to  deprive 
our  great  congregation  of  the  benefit  of  hearing  you 
preach.  I  remain 

*  Yours  truly, 

'A.  P.  S.' 

The  correspondence  with  Dr.  Liddon  resulted  in  a 
similar  refusal,  on  the  same  grounds.  Only  the  draft  of 
one  of  Stanley's  letters  remains,  but  the  tenor  of  his 
previous  letter  is  made  clear  by  Dr.  Liddon's  answer  : 

Dr.  Liddon  to  Dean  Stanley. 

'  Christ  Church  :  March  8,  1864. 

'  My  dear  Mr.  Dean,  —  I  thank  you  sincerely  for  the 
kindness  of  your  note  —  for  all  of  it,  but  particularly  for  your 

^  This  letter  is  apparently  only  the  rough  draft  of  the  letter  actually  sent. 


1 66  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 


reference  to  Dr.  Pusey's  reply  to  your  letter.  It  seems 
due  to  him  that  I  should  say  that  I  am  writing  to  you  in 
entire  independence  of  his  judgment. 

'  I  trust  that  you  will  not  deem  me  wanting,  either  in 
respect  and  gratitude  to  yourself,  or  in  duty  to  the  Church, 
if  I  beg  you  to  allow  me  to  decline  your  invitation. 

'The  recent  judgment  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of 
the  Privy  Council  has  thrown  not  a  few  minds  among  us 
into  the  greatest  perplexity.  It  is  my  duty  knowingly  to 
do  nothing  which,  in  any  degree,  with  any  one  mind,  may 
increase  this  (in  my  judgment)  very  natural  distress. 

'There  is  a  current  report  that  you  will  ask  Professor 
Jowett,  Mr.  Maurice,  and  other  clergymen  of  the  same 
school  to  preach  at  the  Abbey.  You  have  an  unquestioned 
right  to  do  so  ;  and  the  generosity  which  prompts  you  to 
ask  me,  who  have  never  concealed  my  dissent  from  lati- 
tudinarian  principles,  would  d  fortiori  lead  you  to  ask  men 
of  undeniable  eminence,  and  with  whose  convictions  you 
so  much  more  nearly  agree.  Therefore  I  do  not  take  the 
liberty  of  inquiring  whether  the  report  be  true.  I  assume 
it  to  be  so. 

'  But  every  clergyman,  however  humble  his  position, 
has  a  certain  number  of  persons  who  look  up  to  him,  and 
whose  case  he  is  bound  to  keep  in  mind,  not  less  in  his 
public  acts  than  in  his  public  utterances.  If,  at  the  present 
serious  juncture,  I  should  voluntarily  range  myself  side  by 
side  with  men  who  notoriously  rejoice  at  the  recent 
disastrous  judgment,  such  conduct  on  my  part  would  be 
understood  by  not  a  few  people  to  mean  that,  after  all,  I 
believed  the  questions  at  issue  to  be  of  little  real  impor- 
tance—  mere  questions  of  words,  which  ought  not  to  divide 
educated  and  large-hearted  men.  The  result  would  —  or, 
at  any  rate,  too  probably  might  be  —  in  some  cases  in- 
difference ;  in  others,  the  Church  of  Rome. 

'  If,  of  course,  my  own  conscience  was  perfectly  clear 
as  to  the  duty  of  public  acts  of  fellowship  with  men  like 
Mr.  Maurice,  &c.,  &c.,  it  would  be  right  to  disregard  con- 
sequences. But,  on  the  contrary,  I  cannot  but  recognise 
the  fact,  that  on  the  most  sacred  questions  we  are  hope- 
lessly divided  —  on  questions  which  touch  nothing  less  than 
the  revealed  character  and  attributes  of  Almighty  God.  A 
legal  (rather  than  a  moral)  bond  retains  us  within  the  same 
communion  —  or,  rather,  God's  providence  does  so,  I  hope 


CHAP.  XXI       CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  LIDDON  1 6/ 


and  pray  with  a  view  to  future  unity  of  conviction,  how- 
ever improbable  that  may  seem  at  present. 

'  But,  meanwhile,  I  shrink  from  being  a  party  to  pre- 
senting these  sharp  contrasts  (as  some  men  would  say) 
between  different  opinions  (as  I  am  bound  to  say),  between 
truth  and  error,  before  the  people  of  London  at  a  time 
when  so  much  is  at  stake.  I  am  not  insensible  to  the 
privilege  you  offer  me  of  preaching  in  the  first  of  English 
cathedrals  to  the  first  of  English  congregations.  But  you 
would  be  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  recognise  ambition 
as  a  legitimate  motive  in  these  matters  ;  and  I  must  trust 
to  your  kindly  interpretation  of  what  I  have  said  as  to 
what  seem  to  me  to  be  the  real  merits  of  the  question. 
To  the  people  of  London  at  large,  and  to  yourself,  it  can- 
not make  a  shade  of  difference  whether  I  preach  or  not. 
Someone  else  will  do  much  better  in  my  place.  To  me  it 
seems  to  be  a  question  between  truthfulness  and  insincerity 
of  purpose. 

'  Again  thanking  you, 

*  I  am,  my  dear  Mr.  Dean, 

'  Yours  very  faithfully, 

'  H.   P.  LiDDON. 

'The  Very  Reverend  The  Dean  of  Westminster." 

Dean  Stanley  to  Dr.  Liddon. 

'  March  9,  1864. 

'My  dear  Liddon,  —  I  cannot  close  my  communications 
with  you  respecting  the  sermons  at  Westminster  Abbey 
without  expressing  to  you,  as  I  once  did  before,  only  now 
in  a  stronger  tone,  my  deep  disappointment  at  the  posi- 
tion which  the  leaders  of  the  High  Church  party  have 
adopted  in  this  crisis  of  the  Church  of  England. 

'  Had  they,  a  few  months,  or  years,  before,  accepted  the 
proposal  which  was  vainly  offered  to  the  clergy  yesterday,* 
that  scene  of  deplorable  levity  and  injustice  might  have 
been  prevented,  with  all  its  disastrous  consequences.  Had 
they  now  endeavoured  to  guide  the  minds  of  their  younger, 
or  less  instructed,  brethren  through  this  necessary  period 

*The  reference  is  to  the  action  of  Convocation  at  Oxford  in  March  1864. 
The  grant  to  the  Rev.  B.  Jowett  in  payment  of  }iis  work  as  Professor  of  Greek, 
although  recommended  on  this  occasion  by  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr.  Keble,  was 
rejected  by  the  non-resident  members  of  Convocation,  on  the  ground  of  the 
Professor's  theological  opinions. 


1 68  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 


of  transition,  instead  of  inflaming  and  intensifying  the 
panic  and  the  faction  of  the  moment  to  the  highest  pitch, 
what  disasters  might  not  have  been  averted  for  the  future ! 

'  I  shall  never  regret,  whatever  comes,  that  I  have  made 
the  attempt  to  treat  as  brethren  in  the  same  church  those 
who  refuse  to  preach  within  the  same  walls  as  myself,  and 
who  accept,  without  excuse,  the  alliance  of  the  most  un- 
scrupulous of  English  newspapers,  whilst  they  shrink  from 
the  slightest  possibility  of  appearing  under  the  same  con- 
secrated roof  with  a  man  so  holy  and  self -devoted  as 
Frederick  Maurice. 

'That  they  have  so  met  the  offer  of  conciliation  will 
not  shake  my  conviction  that  I  might  reasonably  have  ex- 
pected a  more  blessed  result,  or  alter  my  desire  that  such 
a  result  should  follow.' 

Dr.  Liddon  to  Dean  Stanley. 

'  Christ  Church  :  March  10,  1864. 

*  My  dear  Mr.  Dean,  —  I  could  not  but  fear  that  my 
letter  would  cause  you  pain.  So  far  as  I  know  my  own 
heart,  I  meant  nothing  personal — nothing  that,  as  I 
thought,  was  not  due  to  conscience  and  principle.  That 
I  expressed  myself  unskilfully  is  only  too  likely.  That 
you  do  not  consider  my  letter  a  reason  for  suspending  our 
intercourse  is  a  fresh  proof  of  your  generosity,  for  which  I 
cannot  but  thank  you. 

'  It  is  only  by  his  books  and  by  his  letters  in  the  news- 
papers that  I  know  anything  of  Mr.  F.  D.  Maurice.  What 
you  say  about  his  holiness  and  devotedness  is  only  what 
others  have  told  me.  That  he  is  so  good  a  man  I  rejoice 
to  believe  with  all  my  heart.  It  is  an  earnest  of  his  return 
to  the  faith  of  the  Church.  That  so  good  a  man  should  be 
mistaken  is  a  very  perplexing  mystery  of  the  moral  world. 
But  he  is  not  its  only  illustration.  No  doubt  he  is  a  re- 
buke to  most  of  us  who  hold  truths  which  he  denies. 
Tyre  and  Sidon  have  always  a  lesson  for  Chorazin  and 
Bethsaida.  But  mere  moral  goodness  is  not  a  sufficient 
basis  for  engaging  in  a  public  profession  to  teach  the  people 
a  common  faith.  You  must  draw  the  line  somewhere  ;  and 
the  question  is  one  of  degree.  No  one  doubts  Channing's 
goodness.    Yet  Channing  taught  Socinianism  in  terms. 

'One  of  the  many  miseries  of  the  recent  judgment  is 
undoubtedly  tJiis :  that  it  must  lead  to  an  increase  of 


CHAP.  XXI      CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  LIDDON 


169 


sectarian  feeling  and  action  among  the  clergy.  When, 
through  the  long-deplored  deficiencies  of  administration  in 
her  public  law,  the  Church  is  no  longer  protected  against 
the  most  serious  forms  of  error,  individuals  cannot  but  feel 
that  their  moral  responsibility  to  God  and  man  for  appear- 
ing publicly  to  countenance  such  errors  is  almost  indefinitely 
increased.  Thus  opinion  tends  more  and  more  to  super- 
sede law.  This  is  deplorable ;  but,  in  spiritual  matters 
especially,  law  should  emanate  from  sources  which  com- 
mand the  respect  of  conscience.  How  different  are  the 
principles  enunciated  in  the  "  Statute  of  Appeals  "  from  the 
facts  of  the  actual  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council 
—  constructed  with  a  view  to  hearing  appeals  in  Admiralty 
cases  ! 

'  But  here  you  will  not  agree.  I,  too,  deplore  the  vote 
of  the  day  before  yesterday.  But  I  am  not  surprised.  As 
the  "  Times  "  pointed  out,  the  recent  "judgment "  is  the  real 
culprit.  And  while  I  lament  the  mistake  which  so  mis- 
construed or  ignored  the  "clause"  of  the  statute  as  to 
refuse  Professor  Jowett  the  endowment,  and  to  acquiesce 
(one  knows  not  for  how  long)  in  a  false  and  painful  posi- 
tion, I  cannot  lament  the  truly  Christian  feeling  of  distress, 
and  something  more,  which  the  judgment  itself  has  elicited 
from  men  of  the  widest  knowledge  and  of  the  greatest 
holiness  of  life,  e.g.  Mr.  Keble.  You  speak,  my  dear  Mr. 
Dean,  of  a  period  of  transition.  Transition  to  what }  One 
current  of  thought  flows  towards  Mr.  J.  Stuart  Mill,  and 
Positivism  beyond,  and  another  towards  Baur  and  the 
school  of  Tubingen,  and  the  desolate  waste  beyond  that. 
The  Girondinsof  revolution  have  their  day  :  but  they  make 
way  for  its  Jacobins.  .  .  .  All  might  have  been  saved  if 
Newman  had  remained  with  us  ;  or  if  (pardon  my  bold- 
ness) someone  like  yourself  had  taken  up  his  work,  and 
had  endeavoured  to  recover  the  hearts  of  English  Church- 
men to  the  principle  of  authority  —  a  recovery  to  issue  in 
God's  good  time,  and  with  due  respect  to  the  gains  achieved 
by  the  Reformation,  in  a  reconciliation  of  the  Churches  of 
Christendom.  As  it  is,  the  prospect  is  dreary ;  one  can 
only  trust  in  Him  who  reigns  above  the  storm. 

'  But  the  co-operation  of  High  and  Low  Churchmen  in 
defence  of  truths  which  they  hold  in  common  is  surely  a 
feature  of  the  present  crisis  for  which  to  be  thankful.  That 
the  "  Record  "  should  be  the  vehicle  or  symbol  of  this  recon- 


I/O  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STAiYLEY  1864 


ciliation  may  be  unwelcome,  but  it  is  hardly  so  serious  as 
your  allusion  implies.  Mr.  Maurice  writes  to  a  paper  so 
flagrantly  disloyal  to  Christian  truth  as  the  "  Spectator." 
I  do  not  suppose  that  he  would  endorse  its  editorial  irre- 
ligion ;  he  merely  illustrates  in  one  way,  as  Dr.  Pusey  in 
another,  the  exigencies  of  a  position. 

'  You  say,  my  dear  Mr.  Dean,  that  we  refuse  to  preach 
in  the  same  church  with  yourself.  You  will,  I  trust,  for- 
give me  for  saying  that  Churchmen  have  hoped  —  hoped 
and  prayed,  hoped  against  hope  —  that  one  from  whom  so 
much  might  be  expected  as  yourself  would  one  day  be 
with  them.  A  very  able  undergraduate  told  me  that  he 
"  had  even  shed  tears  at  the  thought  of  what  Dr.  Stanley 
might  have  done  for  the  cause  of  positive  truth  at  Oxford 
with  his  wonderful  powers."  Even  now  we  do  not  acquiesce 
in  the  miserable  conviction  that  you  have  cast  in  your  lot 
with  men  like  Colenso  and  others,  who  are  labouring  to 
destroy  and  blot  out  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  from  the 
hearts  of  the  English  people.  We  still  believe  that  your 
generosity  rather  than  your  judgment  links  you  even  with 
Mr.  Maurice  and  Mr.  Jowett.  We  are  quite  sure  that  your 
love  of  truth,  your  sense  of  moral  beauty,  and,  in  an  eminent 
degree,  your  historical  tastes  and  wide  sympathies,  link  you 
to  us,  who  cherish  the  memories  of  the  Movement  of 
1833-50,  as  to  no  other  men  in  the  English  Church. 

'  You  will,  I  trust,  forgive  the  extreme  freedom  with 
which  I  have  answered  a  letter  to  which  silence  might  have 
been  the  most  respectful  answer,  if  it  had  not  been  open  to 
misunderstanding. 

'  Your  faithful  and  obliged 

'  H.  P.  LiDDON. 

'  The  Very  Reverend  The  Dean  of  Westminster.' 

The  refusal  of  the  High  Church  leaders  to  preach  in 
Westminster  Abbey  was  partly  dictated  by  the  conditions 
of  the  existing  crisis.  But  their  deeper  reasons  were  in- 
dependent of  any  temporary  cause.  They  were  based  on 
Stanley's  attitude  towards  ecclesiastical  and  religious  ques- 
tions of  the  day.  His  first  attempt  to  use  his  position  as 
Dean  of  Westminster  for  'the  enlargement  of  the  Church  ' 
thus  ended  in  failure.    But  the  failure  neither  shook  his 


CHAP.  XXI     CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  LWDON 


171 


conviction  that  he  was  right  nor  deterred  him  from  renew- 
ing the  effort.  In  March  1866,  when  the  pubUcation  of 
Pusey's  Eirenicon  seemed  to  afford  a  more  propitious 
opportunity,  he  again  invited  Pusey  and  Liddon  to  preach, 
and  they  again  declined.  '  The  motto  of  your  letter,'  says 
Liddon,  '  might  well  be,  "  Charity  suffereth  long,  and  is 
kind." '  No  personal  nor  temporary  issue  was  involved  in 
the  refusal.  A  principle  seemed  to  be  at  stake.  '  Forgive 
me,'  says  Liddon  in  his  first  letter,  in  March  1866, — 

'is  not  the  practical  question  this — Whether  the  Church 
of  Christ  is  to  be  viewed  as  a  mere  Literary  Society,  or  as 
a  home  and  mother  of  dying  souls .''  If  the  former,  then 
the  greater  the  divergence  of  "views  "  the  better,  because 
such  divergence  is  a  proof  of  intellectual  movement,  to 
say  the  least.  If  the  latter,  tJien  fixed  doctrines  are  neces- 
sary, and  it  is  a  mere  question  of  fact  and  degree  when 
divergence  of  opinion  is  tolerable.  You  would  not  tolerate 
the  Yorkshire  clergyman  who  has  just  been  saying  that  our 
Divine  Lord  is  the  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary.  You  accept, 
then,  within  limits,  a  principle  which  enables  you  to  under- 
stand those  who,  like  myself,  have  no  doubt  that  the  truths 
recently  impugned  by  writers  whom  you  uphold  are  inte- 
gral portions  of  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  who 
would  not  permit  such  truths  to  be  impugned,  if  they 
could  prevent  it.' 

In  the  same  spirit  is  couched  his  second  letter  : 

'  I  dare  say  it  does  not  fall  to  your  lot  to  see  as  much 
as  we  more  decided  Churchmen  do  of  persons  who  are 
embarrassed  by  the  claims  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Their 
one  great  argument  is,  "  divisions  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land." That  these  divisions  exist  — deep  and  far-reaching 
—  is  an  undeniable  fact,  and  quite  beyond  the  power  of  any 
individual  to  control.  But  I  shrink  more  than  I  can  say 
from  helping  to  make  the  already  painful  contrasts  more 
vivid  and  distressing  by  officiating  publicly  before  the 
Church  in  London  with  a  number  of  clergymen  from 
whom  I  am  separated  in  heart  and  mind  by  an  interval 
scarcely  less  than  that  which  parts  Athanasius  from  Soci- 
nus.    Less  injury,  it  seems  to  me,  would  be  done  to  faith, 


172 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


in  all  that  is  most  precious  and  sacred,  if  none  were  allowed 
to  preach  in  the  Abbey  who  had  not  qualified  themselves 
for  doing  so  by  writing  in  the  "Essays  and  Reviews." 

'  I  must  entreat  you  to  believe  that  the  matter  is  one  of 
principle.  To  yourself  personally  I  have  every  reason  to 
be  affectionately  grateful,  and  for  your  character  and  genius 
(as  distinct  from  the  errors  to  which  you  give  your  power- 
ful support)  I  have  a  sincere  respect,  which  it  would  be 
impertinent,  but  very  agreeable  to  me,  to  dwell  upon.' 

The  correspondence  already  quoted  proves  how  deeply, 
as  well  as  widely,  the  High  Church  party  diverged  from 
Stanley's  views.  Nor  was  the  chasm  less  broad  or  less 
profound  which  separated  him  from  Low  Churchmen. 
What  he  thought  to  be  for  the  life  of  Christianity  both 
ecclesiastical  parties  held  to  be  for  its  death.  Much  that 
they  regarded  as  vital  seemed  to  him  to  be  trivial,  if  not 
deadly.  Time  only  widened  the  breach.  Throughout  the 
whole  of  his  career  as  Dean  of  Westminster  he  avowed 
aims  and  laboured  for  ends  which  were  unpalatable  to  the 
religious  world  at  large,  and,  above  all,  to  the  great 
majority  of  his  clerical  brethren.  Clear  and  definite  in  his 
views,  outspoken,  uncompromising,  and  even  fiery  in  their 
expression,  he  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  contention  which 
thickened  rather  than  dispersed  in  the  course  of  years. 

To  understand  his  position  it  is  necessary  to  grasp  the 
meaning  of  the  words,  '  the  enlargement  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  the  triumph  of  all  truth,'  with  which  he  dedi- 
cated the  third  volume  of  the  'Jewish  Church  '  to  the  mem- 
ory of  his  wife,  as  expressing  the  joint  aim  of  their  lives. 
While  he  attracted  thousands  of  the  members  of  other  com- 
munions by  the  comprehensiveness  of  his  charity,  he  re- 
pelled large  numbers  of  persons  by  the  sacrifices  which  he 
was  prepared  to  make  for  the  attainment  of  his  ideal.  No 
ecclesiastic  in  the  world  probably  stood  higher  in  the  re- 
spect of  a  larger  and  more  varied  circle  of  the  members  of 


CHAP.  XXI  STANLEY'S  POSITION  IN  THE  CHURCH     1 73 


many  Churches.  But  it  is  equally  probable  that,  within 
his  own  Church,  and  among  his  clerical  brethren,  no  living 
clergyman  was  more  fiercely  assailed,  or,  in  his  ecclesiastical 
character,  regarded  with  greater  aversion. 

So  stormy  was  the  atmosphere  in  which  Stanley  lived 
as  Dean  of  Westminster,  that  it  might  be  supposed  to  be 
the  air  which  he  breathed  most  freely.  Yet  such  a  suppo- 
sition is  very  far  from  the  truth.  By  tastes  and  interests 
he  belonged  to  that  class  of  persons  in  the  religious  com- 
munity which  Izaak  Walton  distinguished  from  '  the  active 
Romanists  '  and  '  the  restless  Nonconformists  '  as  '  passive, 
peaceable  Protestants.'  '  These  last,'  says  the  gentle  angler, 
'pleaded  and  defended  their  cause  by  established  laws,  both 
ecclesiastical  and  civil :  and,  if  they  were  active,  it  was  to 
prevent  the  other  two  from  destroying  what  was  by  those 
known  laws  established  to  them  and  their  posterity.' 

Stanley  knew  that  any  system  which  aims  at  union 
involves  individual  sacrifice  for  the  common  good,  and  that 
the  spirit  of  division  is  also  the  spirit  of  subdivision.  Thrown 
upon  an  age  of  unusual  ferment  in  both  thought  and  specu- 
lation, he  had  to  choose  between  the  refusal  to  conform  to 
any  system  in  which  he  found  something  from  which  to 
dissent,  and  continuance  in  the  most  elastic  and  compre- 
hensive form  of  religious  organisation  that  existed,  in  the 
hope  of  preserving  and  widening  its  basis.  He  chose  the 
latter  alternative  with  all  its  consequences.  'The  path,'  as 
he  himself  says, 

'  of  a  theologian  who  in  any  existing  system  loves  truth 
and  seeks  charity  is  indeed  difficult  at  best.' 

And  so  he  found  it  to  be  by  his  own  experience.  But 
the  desire 

'to  serve  a  great  institution,  and  by  serving  it  to  endeav- 
our to  promote  within  it  a  vitality  which  shall  secure  it  as  a 


174 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


shelter  for  such  as  will  have  to  continue  the  struggle  after 
we  are  gone,' 

was  the  ambition  by  which  he  was  animated,  and  the  cause 
for  which  he  endured  much  that,  to  a  man  of  his  sensitive 
nature,  would  otherwise  have  been  intolerable. 

A  Church  that  embodies  so  much  reverence  for  the 
past  as  the  Church  of  England  necessarily  appealed  in  the 
strongest  manner  to  his  historic  feeling.  But,  apart  from 
this,  the  union  of  Church  and  State  appeared  to  him  to  be 
'a  combination  which,  with  all  its  shortcomings,  exhibits 
one  of  the  noblest  works  which  God's  Providence  through 
a  long  course  of  ages  has  raised  up  in  Europe.'  He  did 
not  deny,  that  each  by  itself,  and  in  relation  to  the  other, 
needed  changes  in  order  that  they  might  more  worthily 
represent  the  religious  condition  of  the  country.  But  in  the 
joint  action  of  the  secular  and  ecclesiastical  elements  within 
the  body  politic  he  found  the  widest  sphere  of  religious 
liberty,  the  most  extensive  field  for  future  usefulness,  the 
broadest  prospect  of  religious  progress.  A  Church  which,  in 
outline,  is  stamped  with  a  peculiar  reverence  for  the  historic 
past,  and  yet,  in  its  peculiarities  of  detail,  is  the  product  of  a 
Reformation,  is,  as  he  thought,  necessarily  latitudinarian  — 
by  the  very  conditions  of  its  existence  'neither  High,  nor 
Low,  but  Broad.'  And  Stanley  valued  the  Established 
Church  as  the  strongest  guarantee  of  religious  toleration, 
and  as  the  best  guardian  of  that  broad  traditionary  platform 
of  belief  on  which  Christendom  might  some  day  meet  in 
amity.  He  valued  it  also  for  its  elasticity  and  capacity  of 
growth,  for  the  opportunity  which  it  afforded  to  the  devel- 
opment of  religious  freedom,  for  the  refuge  that  it  offered, 
not  only  to  the  commanding  and  aspiring,  but  to  the 
simple  and  childlike  minds  of  the  community.  He  valued 
it,  finally,  as 


CHAP.  XXI     H/S  VIEW  OF  CHURCH  AND  STATE  I7S 


*  another  form  of  that  great  Christian  principle,  that 
cardinal  doctrine  of  the  Reformation,  which  is  at  the  same 
time  truly  catholic  and  truly  Apostolical  —  that  Christian 
life  and  Christian  theology  thrive  most  vigorously,  not  by 
separation,  and  isolation,  and  secrecy,  but  by  intercom- 
munion v^rith  the  domestic  and  social  relations  of  man  —  in 
the  world,  though  not  of  it.' 

He  could  not  endure  the  thought  of  cutting  adrift  the 
life  of  the  Church  from  that  of  the  nation,  nor  of  depriving 
the  State  of  the  official  witness  to  the  spiritual  aspects  of 
national  interests.  The  consequences  of  such  a  severance 
seemed  to  him  to  be  fatal  to  religious  liberty.  In  the 
rupture  of  the  bond  of  union  he  saw  the  destruction 
of  a  great  idea  embodied  in  a  grand  historic  fact  ;  the 
exchange  of  a  wide  outlook  for  a  narrow,  restricted  scope  ; 
the  triumph  of  the  persecuting  principle  of  exclusion, 
which  governs  sects,  over  the  tolerant  principle  of  com- 
prehension, that  animates  the  Church ;  the  repudiation  of 
the  supremacy  of  impartial  law,  and  the  subordination  of 
the  clergy  to  the  prejudices  of  inquisitorial  prelates  or  the 
panics  of  tumultuous  Synods. 

Valuing,  as  he  did,  the  constitutional  framework  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  dreading  what  seemed  to  him  the 
inevitable  consequences  of  its  severance  from  the  State,  he 
defended  the  existing  union  with  all  the  vigour  of  which 
he  was  capable.  Those  Ritualists  who  denounced  the  Es- 
tablishment as  Erastian,  and  those  Nonconformists  who 
agitated  for  disestablishment,  stood  outside  the  pale  of  his 
toleration  ;  both  were  placed  beyond  the  limits  to  which 
the  catholicity  of  his  charity  extended.  But  had  Stanley 
confined  himself  to  the  defence  of  the  existing  framework  of 
the  National  Church,  he  would  have  been  easily  pardoned 
by  his  clerical  brethren.  There  was,  however,  another  side 
to  his  activity.  He  was  not  merely  anxious  to  preserve 
the  enlargement  which  the  Church  already  possessed,  and 


176 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


which  the  State  guaranteed ;  he  desired  also  to  stretch 
the  borders  of  the  Church  to  its  widest  possible  limits,  and 
so  to  widen  its  basis  that  it  might  more  worthily  sustain 
its  national  character.  In  the  prospects  of  increased  use- 
fulness that  awaited  the  Church,  when  thus  enlarged,  lay 
his  chief  hope  for  the  future. 

In  principle,  though  not  in  form,  his  theory  agreed 
with  that  of  men  who  had  profoundly  influenced  his  mind. 
The  identity  of  the  Christian  Commonwealth  with  the 
Christian  State  was  the  vision  that  inspired  the  Ecclesiasti- 
cal Polity  of  Hooker.  It  was  the  ruling  thought  of  Selden's 
grave  sense,  of  Burke's  high  political  philosophy,  and  of 
the  religious  philosophy  of  Coleridge.  It  was  the  work  to 
which  Arnold,  both  in  practice  and  speculation,  desired  to 
set  his  hand  before  the  evening  of  his  life  closed  about  him. 
It  was  this  same  principle  of  identity  which  in  Stanley's 
mind  took  the  form  of  the  close  approximation,  and,  in 
time,  the  intimate  union  of  all  the  secular  and  religious 
elements  within  the  nation,  the  ultimate  cohesion,  in  an 
outward  form,  if  possible,  'of  our  fellow-countrymen  in 
one  communion  of  fellowship  of  good  words  and  good 
works.' 

So  long  as  Stanley  restricted  his  pursuit  of  his  ideal  to 
social  efforts  to  remove  the  estrangement  which  impedes 
the  approaches  of  rival  religious  bodies,  and  which  breeds 
misunderstanding  and  fosters  exasperation,  he  gave  little 
or  no  offence  to  his  clerical  brethren.  If  he  did  not 
command  their  full  sympathy,  he  did  not  excite  their  dread 
and  aversion.  But  when  he  endeavoured  to  simplify  and 
universalise  Christian  theology  and  the  ideas  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  directed  his  energies  towards  the  removal  of  the 
doctrinal  or  legal  barriers  to  comprehension,  their  feelings 
underwent  a  marked  change.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  under- 
stand why  much  that  was  really  positive  and  conservative 


CHAP.  XXI 


HIS  RELIGIOUS  TEACHING 


177 


in  his  teaching  should  have  been  regarded  as  purely  nega- 
tive and  destructive. 

Stanley  loved  his  great  profession,  and  estimated  highly 
its  powers  of  usefulness.  But  it  never  seemed  to  him  to 
be  a  thing  apart  from  ordinary  life.  He  was  himself  a 
man  of  varied  human  tastes,  devoted  to  literature,  interested 
in  politics.  And  this  variety  of  tastes  and  interests  has 
stamped  its  impress  on  his  teaching.  In  all  his  sermons, 
speeches,  and  writings,  he  endeavours  to  secularise,  human- 
ise, and  moralise  Christian  theology  —  to  draw  it  down,  as  it 
were,  from  heaven  to  earth.  One  aspect  of  his  mission 
was  the  attempt  to  vindicate  the  sanctity  of  the  secular 
world  ;  to  maintain  that  the  sacred  seal  which  is  set  on  one 
side  of  life  is  the  pledge  of  the  sacredness  of  the  whole ;  to 
find  the  same  law  in  things  earthly  and  things  heavenly ; 
to  claim  for  every  natural  opportunity  of  doing  good  or 
turning  from  evil  a  channel  of  Divine  grace  ;  to  break  down 
the  limits  within  which  ecclesiastical  parties  confine  the 
exclusive  operations  of  spiritual  influences  ;  to  show  that 
all  history,  and  not  one  branch  of  history  only,  contains 
the  record  of  God's  dealings  with  mankind.  Another  aspect 
of  the  sam.e  mission  was  the  effort  to  lay  bare  the  deep 
basis  of  morality  on  which  theology  rested  ;  to  bring  sacred 
thought  out  of  the  shadowy  region  of  abstraction  ;  to 
humanise  conventional  forms,  and  to  make  them  living 
instruments  of  moral  education  ;  to  propagate  Christianity 
as  a  life,  rather  than  to  hand  it  down  as  a  system,  a  thesis, 
or  a  philosophy.  A  third  aspect  of  the  same  mission,  and 
one  which  was  more  congenial  to  the  tastes  of  a  man  who 
was  more  an  ecclesiastic  than  a  theologian,  and  less  an 
abstract  thinker  than  an  historian,  was  his  effort  to  trace 
the  genesis  of  beliefs,  and  still  more  of  ceremonies  and 
institutions  ;  to  indicate  their  early  forms,  and  the  processes 
by  which  they  have  been  changed ;  to  insist  on  the  close 
VOL.  II  N 


178 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


community  of  origin  which  unites  sacred  and  secular 
usages  ;  to  find  the  birth  of  Christian  institutions  in  the 
social  customs  of  early  ages,  and  thus  to  combat,  by  the 
evidence  of  historical  fact,  the  belief  in  what  he  calls  '  the 
magical  offices  of  a  sacerdotal  caste.' 

Such  teaching  as  this  has  a  strongly  positive  side ;  but, 
for  those  who  differed  from  it,  it  was,  not  unnaturally, 
confounded  with  negative  criticism.  It  is  always  more  easy 
to  be  just  to  a  declared  foe  than  to  an  ally  who  seems  to 
be  betraying  the  cause.  When  Stanley  vindicated  the 
sanctity  of  secular  life,  he  was  thought  by  his  adversaries 
to  lose  sight  of  the  Divine  in  the  human,  to  depreciate  the 
hidden  spiritual  mysteries  which  the  Church  embodies  in 
its  creeds,  to  secure  simplicity  by  the  sacrifice  of  essential 
complexities.  Man's  finite  understanding  comprehends 
the  manifestations  of  Infinite  Power  most  readily  through 
limitations.  Hence  the  denial  of  the  exclusive  limitations 
seemed  to  be  a  denial  of  the  reality  of  the  manifestations. 
'  Everybody's  business  is  nobody's  business.'  To  trace  the 
operations  of  spiritual  influences  everywhere  appeared  to 
result  in  finding  them  nowhere.  The  assertion  that  all 
history  is  sacred  was  treated  as  a  doubt  of  the  special 
sanctity  of  any  one  particular  record.  So,  again,  in  the 
excess  of  his  recoil  from  the  dead  nomenclature  and  lifeless 
abstractions  of  theology,  he  seemed  to  his  critics  to  ignore 
its  true  value,  and,  passing  to  the  opposite  extreme,  to 
regard  doctrines  which  did  not  appeal  directly  to  the 
conscience  or  regulate  conduct  as  mere  playthings  of  the 
schools.  Wherever  the  impulses  of  natural  piety  could 
reach,  wherever  truth  came  into  direct  contact  with  human 
consciousness,  or  touched  the  common  necessities  of 
spiritual  life,  there  he  stood  on  sure  ground,  and  spoke 
with  positive  emphasis.  But  he  was  so  intent  on  empha- 
sising the  natural,  moral,  and  historical  a.spects  of  the 


CHAP.  XXI       METHODS  OF  RELIGIOUS  INQUIRY  1/9 


'deep things  of  God,'  that  he  sometimes  seemed  to  neglect 
those  depths  of  meaning  which  transcend  all  types  of 
human  feeling,  and  from  which  mere  moral  analysis  pro- 
duces results  that  are  inadequate  or  misleading.  To  many 
minds  it  seemed  that,  in  unfolding  the  genesis  of  beliefs,  he 
was  attempting  their  refutation ;  that,  in  insisting  on  the 
human  circumstances,  the  simple  usages,  the  moral  inten- 
tion of  the  Sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper, 
he  was  impugning  the  sanctity  of  the  rites  themselves  ; 
and  that,  in  his  absorbing  interest  in  the  outward  develop- 
ment of  institutions,  he  neglected  their  inner  meaning, 
their  animating  spirit,  and  the  transcendent  facts  which 
they  implied  and  symbolically  expressed. 

Nor  was  it  only  Stanley's  wish  to  draw  down  theology 
from  heaven  to  earth  which  thus  shocked  the  theological 
instincts  of  his  clerical  brethren.  The  means  by  which  he 
pursued  his  end  gave  almost  equal  offence.  He  applied 
to  theology  the  methods  of  historical  science  and  the  law 
of  historical  development,  and  thus  came  into  collision  with 
all  the  conservative  instincts  which  rightly  guard  the 
great  interests  of  the  Christian  faith.  He  believed  that  no 
fear  of  consequences  nor  inducement  of  advantages  could 
relieve  men  from  the  obligation  of  free  inquiry.  No  man 
loved  to  look  facts  more  directly  in  the  face,  or  to  know  the 
exact  and  certain  truth.  His  passion  for  light  is  the  feature 
upon  which  Matthew  Arnold  has  seized  in  his  threnody  on 
his  friend : 

What  !  for  a  term  so  scant 

Our  shining  visitant 
Cheer'd  us,  and  now  is  pass'd  into  the  night  ? 

Could'st  thou  no  better  keep,  O  Abbey  old  ! 

The  boon  to  thy  foundation- hour  foretold. 
The  presence  of  that  gracious  inmate,  Light  ? 

And  it  was  with  penetrating  insight  and  the  fullest  free- 
dom that  Stanley  searched  the  foundations  of  Christian 

N  2 


l80  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 

institutions  and  Christian  creeds,  indicating  what  was 
uncertain,  what  unproved,  what  unverifiable,  what  parasitic, 
exaggerated,  or  abnormal.  Though  here,  too,  the  positive 
and  negative  results  of  his  work  were  largely  blended,  yet 
the  destructive  character  appeared  to  many  minds  to  pre- 
dominate. In  reaching  the  divine  simplicities  on  which 
he  desired  to  build  he  brushed  aside  many  uncertain,  yet 
cherished,  accumulations  of  the  past.  When  he  drew  men 
back  from  what  he  considered  the  outworks  of  the  letter 
into  the  citadels  of  the  spirit,  he  seemed  to  sacrifice  to  the 
spoiler  many  a  pious  inheritance.  When  he  sought  to 
discriminate  between  the  essence  and  the  accidents  of 
Christianity,  men  ridiculed  his  capacity  to  decide  between 
substance  and  form.  When  he  endeavoured  to  break  the 
'  spell  of  ecclesiasticism,'  and  set  principles  upright  on  their 
feet,  he  appeared  to  surrender  the  world  of  the  unseen  to 
the  jurisdiction  of  mere  opinion,  and  to  exalt  human  reason- 
ing above  the  tradition  and  authority  of  the  Church. 

That  some  of  the  suspicion  with  which  Stanley's  aims 
and  opinions  were  regarded  was  plausible,  if  not  natural, 
can  scarcely  be  denied  ;  that  it  was  essentially  unfounded 
was  most  fully  known  to  those  who  knew  him  best,  or  who 
studied  his  writings  in  their  entirety.  Passages  might  be, 
it  is  true,  collected  from  his  utterances  which  seem  to 
imply  a  colourless  dilution  of  Christian  realities.  But  such 
passages,  at  their  strongest,  only  afford  evidence  of  the 
occasional  excess  into  which  he  was  led  by  the  strength  of 
his  longings  after  peace  and  his  aspirations  for  union. 
They  are  contradicted  by  the  general  tenor  of  his 
writings,  and  by  pages  after  pages  suffused  with  the  atmo- 
sphere of  quiet  filial  trust  in  which  he  habitually  lived. 
His  toleration  never  obliterated  distinctions  between  good 
and  evil,  and  rarely  confused  indefiniteness  of  enclosure 
with  that  variety  of  access  for  which  he  contended.  The 


CHAP.  XXI       HIS  STANDARD  OF  DOCTRINE 


l8r 


guiding  principle  of  his  catholicity  was,  that  as  the  Father's 
house  has  many  mansions,  so  also  has  it  many  entrances. 

Nor  did  his  impatience  of  doctrinal  distinctions  proceed 
from  lack  of  sympathy  with  what  was  real  in  Christianity ; 
it  was,  rather,  due  to  a  variety  of  other  causes.  It  was  due, 
in  the  first  place,  to  his  peculiar  habit  of  mind.  Nothing 
deeply  interested  him  outside  the  plane  of  human  life. 
Where  the  human  personality  did  not  distinctly  emerge, 
there  his  warmest  sympathies  were  not  elicited.  If  he  were 
asked  to  define  a  dogma,  he  would  draw  out  its  history. 
Where  one  man  would  inquire  into  the  tenets  of  a  heresy, 
he  would  search  for  the  date,  the  birthplace,  the  surround- 
ings, of  the  heresiarch.  This  subordination  of  the  specula- 
tive faculty  to  his  biographical,  political,  historical  instincts 
left  him  intellectually  averse  to  philosophical  systems  or 
metaphysical  thought. 

A  second  reason  for  his  inadequate  grasp  of  the  answers 
which  the  Church,  in  its  creeds  and  its  theology,  has  given 
to  the  deeper  questionings  of  mankind  must  be  sought  in 
the  circumstances  of  his  life.  The  problems  and  their 
answers  lay  outside  his  own  Christian  experiences.  His 
happy  childhood,  the  tranquil  atmosphere  of  his  home  sur- 
roundings, the  sweetness  of  his  nature,  his  prosperous  life, 
contributed  to  make  his  conception  of  religion  bright  and 
sunny.  He  knew  nothing  of  the  gloom  and  the  pessimism 
by  which  a  St.  Augustine  or  a  Luther,  a  Calvin  or  a  Bunyan, 
was  tortured  before  attaining  to  a  knowledge  of  truth. 
The  tragedies  of  the  human  soul,  the  depths  of  spiritual 
pain,  the  dark  technicalities  of  a  Puritan  theology,  be- 
longed to  a  domain  of  thought  and  feeling  to  which  he 
was  a  stranger,  and  he  turned  from  what  to  many  men  are 
necessary  verities  of  religious  experience,  and  therefore 
essential  elements  of  a  comprehensive  Christian  science,  as 
grim  shadows  created  by  mere  morbidity  of  the  imagination. 


1 82  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 

And,  lastly,  his  impatience  of  doctrinal  distinctions  pro- 
ceeded from  the  closeness  of  his  moral  contact  with  the 
spiritual  forces  of  the  Gospel,  from  the  vividness  with  which 
he  realised  the  teaching  of  the  Bible,  from  the  sanctity  that 
he  attached  to  every  side  of  human  life.  '  Not  by  outward 
acts,  or  institutions,  or  signs  of  power,'  he  says,  '  but  by 
being  what  He  was,  has  the  history  of  Jesus  Christ  retained 
its  hold  on  mankind.'  The  life  of  Christ  seemed  to  him  to 
be  primarily  sacred  and  divine  '  because  it  was  supremely, 
superhumanly,  transcendently  good.'  To  follow  in  the 
Master's  footsteps,  and  to  embody  His  principles  in  daily 
life  and  conduct,  was  to  him  the  one  matter  on  which  he 
insisted  as  supremely  important.  If  he  was  silent  on  a 
variety  of  speculations  into  the  supernatural  side  of  religion, 
it  was  mainly  because  the  miracle  of  life  was  with  him 
everywhere.  In  the  course  of  history,  in  the  moral  pro- 
gress of  nations,  in  the  education  of  individual  character, 
he  traced  the  guiding  hand  of  God.  '  I  tremble,'  he  writes 
to  his  wife,  '  to  think  how  every  step  of  my  life  seems  to 
have  been  a  kind  of  miracle.'  '  You  must  not  vex  your- 
self,' he  tells  her  on  another  occasion, 

'  with  the  thought  that  you  are  anything  else  to  me  than  the 
most  abiding,  enduring  source  of  hope  and  joy.  That  such 
an  event  as  our  marriage  should  have  been  permitted  at  all 
I  can  only  regard  as  one  of  those  "miraculous"  signs  of 
God's  Providence  to  each  individual  human  soul  that  is  to 
me  one  of  the  deepest  proofs  of  His  existence,  of  His  love, 
of  His  purpose  for  us.' 

Finding,  as  he  did,  the  truest  proofs  of  religion  in  the 
ordinary  events  of  everyday  life,  treating  all  ground  as 
holy,  looking  upon  all  days  as  the  days  of  Christ,  and 
regarding  as  a  constant  miracle  man's  moral  growth,  he 
was  disposed  to  lay  little  —  perhaps  too  little  —  stress  on 
the  more  extraordinary  phenomena  of  Divine  power.  They 


CHAP.  XXI       VIEIVS  ON  CHURCH  AND  STATE 


183 


awed  him  with  their  mystery ;  they  commanded  his 
reverence ;  but  they  were  not  the  supports  on  which  his 
own  faith  was  built. 

From  the  very  first  Stanley's  aims  and  opinions  brought 
him  into  conflict  with  powerful  tendencies  of  party  feel- 
ing along  the  whole  line  of  theological  and  ecclesiastical 
thought.  And  the  circumstances  in  which  he  stood  almost 
necessarily  gave  to  his  attitude  an  appearance  of  onesided- 
ness.  He  was  fighting  against  the  whole  force  of  religious 
public  opinion,  as  represented  in  Convocation  and  in  the 
religious  press.  The  danger  that  he  dreaded  was,  not  the 
intolerance  of  science,  but  the  intolerance  of  the  dominant 
orthodoxy,  which  was  seeking' to  crush  the  advocates  of 
free  critical  inquiry.  Always  attracted  towards  the  weaker 
side,  he  championed  the  cause  of  those  who  were  attacked 
as  latitudinarians  with  a  fervour  which  sometimes  ap- 
proached to  partisanship  and  a  boldness  that  often  bordered 
on  rashness.  He  thus  created  among  his  clerical  brethren 
the  impression  that  his  charity  ended  where  the  so-called 
orthodoxy  began,  and  that  he  was  more  ready  to  sympathise 
with  those  who  were  perplexed  by  the  doctrinal  difficulties 
of  Christianity  than  with  those  who  were  assured  of  what 
to  them  were  its  doctrinal  verities.  Tolerant  of  the  freest 
speculations  of  honest  doubters,  he  seemed  to  be  impatient 
of  the  position  to  which  honest  believers  were  led  by  their 
positive  convictions. 

In  upholding  the  union  of  Church  and  State,  and  in 
maintaining  the  subordination  of  the  clergy  to  the  law,  he 
offended  those  who  felt  that  the  spirit  of  the  union  had 
changed,  that  the  supremacy  of  a  personal  sovereign  was 
not  the  same  thing  as  the  supremacy  of  Parliament,  and 
that  modifications  were  necessary  to  bring  the  lay  and 
ecclesiastical  elements  into  harmony  within  the  body  politic. 
In  his  attempt  to  simplify  the  idea  of  the  Christian  Church 


1 84  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 

he  was  charged  with  obliterating  its  distinctive  charac- 
teristics, with  degrading  its  sacred  ordinances  to  the  level 
of  human  usages,  and  with  endeavouring  to  construct  a 
Church  in  which  only  negations  were  positive,  and  whose 
only  bond  of  union  was  the  common  disbelief  that  cannot 
bind. 

At  the  same  time,  alike  in  what  he  taught  and  did  not 
teach,  he  increased  the  suspicion  which  his  defence  of  the 
unpopular  party,  and  his  views  of  a  comprehensive  estab- 
lished_  Church,  had  aroused.  His  anxiety  to  avoid  the 
discussion  of  disputed  dogmas  was  misconstrued  into  a 
denial  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Christian  faith.  Eager  to 
discover  common  ground  in  the  midst  of  wide  divergences 
of  opinion,  he  often  irritated  those  whom  he  desired  to  win 
by  ignoring  radical  differences,  and  assuming  an  identity 
between  conflicting  views.  Fastening  upon  the  paramount 
importance  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  aspects  of  religion, 
he  depreciated  the  value  of  the  ceremonial  observances  in 
which  they  were  enshrined.  With  the  '  clear-headed  and 
intrepid  Zwingli,'  he  held  that  the  operations  of  the  Divine 
influence  can  only  be  through  moral  means,  that  the  true 
significance  of  rites  lies  in  the  souls  and  spirits  of  the  re- 
ceivers, and  that  the  essence  of  all  acts  of  communion  is 
the  moral  and  spiritual  fellowship  with  Christ.  In  the 
intensity  of  his  desire  to  drive  men  from  the  letter  to  the 
spirit  of  Christianity,  he  seemed  to  those  who  most  widely 
differed  from  him  to  delight  in  shattering  the  shell  that 
guarded  the  kernel.  Setting  the  substance  of  religion 
immeasurably  above  its  outward  tokens,  struggling  to 
grasp  the  realities  of  which  words  are  only  the  shadows, 
he  spoke  almost  with  contempt  of  the  superstition  of  forms, 
and  treated  with  something  like  impatience  what  he  called 
'  the  materialism  of  the  Altar  and  the  Sacristy.'  To  him 
such  controversies  as  those  about  vestments,  which  he 


CHAP.  XXI   ^ESSAVS  OAT  CHURCH  AND  STATE'  185 


described  as  a  mere  question  of  '  clergymen's  clothes,' 
seemed  trivial,  when  compared  with  the  adjustment  of  the 
balance  between  science  and  theology,  and  mischievous, 
when  they  multiplied  sectarian  differences,  or  impeded 
'  measures  for  the  conciliation  of  our  Nonconformist 
brethren.' 

In  his  '  Essays  on  Church  and  State '  ^  will  be  found 
some  of  his  most  deliberate  thoughts  on  the  ecclesiastical 
controversies  of  the  day.  The  volume  contains  a  history 
of  thirty  years  of  religious  war.  It  contains  also  a  defence 
of  the  union  of  Church  and  State,  a  plea  for  liberty  on 
behalf  of  Evangelicals,  Rationalists,  and  Ritualists,  an 
appeal  for  the  admission  of  '  nonconforming  members  of 
the  Church '  to  the  widest  privileges  of  membership  that 
the  law  would  allow.  Here  are  collected  his  essay  on  the 
Gorham  Judgment,  which  prevented  the  exclusion  of  the 
Evangelical  party  from  the  Church  ;  his  article  on  the  judg- 
ment in  the  case  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews,'  which  upheld 
the  liberty  of  critical  inquiry ;  his  article  on  Ritualism, 
in  which  he  demands  the  toleration  of  opinions  and  prac- 
tices most  distasteful  to  himself.  Here  appears  his  speech 
in  Convocation  on  the  Colenso  controversy,  in  which  the 
principles  established  by  the  judgment  in  the  case  of  '  Essays 
and  Reviews '  seemed  to  be  again  endangered.  Here  is 
the  letter  to  the  Bishop  of  London  in  which  he  fought  the 
battle  of  subscription,  that  he  had  made  peculiarly  his  own. 
Here  are  addresses  in  which  he  urges  the  advantages  of 
the  connection  of  Church  and  State,^  or  maintains  the 
principle  of  concurrent  endowment  as  the  true  solution  of 
the  Irish  Church  question.'''    Here,  finally,  is  a  paper  on 

*  Essays,  chiefly  on  Church  and  State.    London,  1870,  8vo. 

^  An  Address  on  the  Connection  of  Church  and  State.  Delivered  at  Sion 
College.    London,  1868,  8vo. 

"  The  Three  Irish  Churches.  An  Historical  Address  delivered  at  Sion 
College.    London,  1869,  8vo. 


i86 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864 


the  theology  of  the  nineteenth  century,^  in  which  he  traces 
its  relation  to  the  Bible,  to  general  history  and  philosophy, 
and  to  the  Christian  Church. 

To  the  articles  contained  in  this  volume  it  might  be 
sufificient  to  refer  for  the  history  of  Stanley's  attitude 
towards  the  controversies  in  which,  during  the  first  eight 
years  of  his  life  as  Dean  of  Westminster,  he  was  so  re- 
peatedly engaged.  But  he  not  only  fought  for  his  opinions 
with  his  pen  in  the  pages  of  the  Edinburgh  and  Quarterly 
Reviews,  or  of  Fraser's  Magazine.  He  fought  the  battle 
also,  often  single-handed,  in  Convocation.  He  had  at  first 
hesitated  whether  he  should  not  imitate  the  example  of 
most  of  his  predecessors,  and  absent  himself  entirely  from 
its  debates,  or,  like  Archbishop  Trench,  become  a  silent 
spectator  of  its  proceedings.  Eventually  he  decided  that 
'  some  good  might  be  done  by  letting  Convocation  perceive 
that  there  was  another  point  of  view  from  which  their 
proceedings  might  be  approached.'  For  six  or  seven  years 
he  constantly  took  part  in  its  discussions,  though  he  was 
subsequently  inclined  to  doubt  whether  in  so  doing  he 
had  pursued  the  wisest  course.  In  that  time  he  devel- 
oped a  power  of  debate  for  which  those  who  knew  him 
best  were  wholly  unprepared,  and  the  existence  of  which 
he  himself  had  never  suspected.  In  these  unpremeditated 
speeches  in  Convocation  his  opinions  were  uttered  with 
the  most  entire  freedom,  and  were  sometimes  urged  with 
the  exaggeration  which  the  'one-sided  unanimity'  of  his 
opponents  was  apt  to  engender. 

Almost  his  first  appearance  as  a  debater  in  Convocation 
was  made  in  June  1864,  when  the  synodical  condemnation 
of  'Essays  and  Reviews'  was  carried  by  a  large  majority. 
Stanley  strongly  protested  against  the  '  indecent  speed ' 

*  First  printed  in  Eraser's  Magazine  for  February  1865,  from  a  paper  read 
at  a  meeting  of  tlie  London  clergy. 


CHAP.  XXI      H/S  SPEECHES  IN  CONVOCATION 


187 


with  which,  in  his  opinion,  the  matter  was  dragged  through 
Convocation,  and  succeeded  in  carrying  the  postponement 
of  a  decision  from  June  22nd  to  June  24th.  In  the  course 
of  his  first  speech  he  met  the  assertion  that  the  Essayists 
had  combined  together  in  writing  the  volume  with  a  direct 
denial,  based  upon  his  personal  authority.  To  the  charge 
of  a  conspiracy  of  silence  he  replied  by  declaring  that  he 
was  himself  responsible  for  the  advice  under  which  two  of 
the  Essayists  had  acted. ^ 

When  the  final  debate  took  place,  on  June  24th,  1864, 
Stanley,  in  a  vigorous  speech,  attacked  the  judgment  by 
which  it  was  proposed  to  condemn  the  book.  '  I  main- 
tain,' he  said, 

'that  there  are  four  great  objections  (there  may  be  many 
others) ;  but  there  are  four  great  objections  on  the  face  of 
it  which  ought  to  prevent  this  assembly  from  adopting  the 
judgment  :  first,  it  is  ambiguous  ;  secondly,  it  is  undiscrimi- 
nating ;  thirdly,  it  is  unfair ;  and  fourthly,  it  is  nugatory. 

*  In  the  first  place,  it  is  ambiguous.  I  have  already 
endeavoured  to  prove  this.  I  went  yesterday  through  the 
judgment  word  by  word,  and  I  showed  that,  while  it  as- 
serted that  the  Essays  contained  teaching  contrary  to  the 
doctrine  received  by  the  Church  of  England,  there  was 
absolutely  no  definition  of  what  the  teaching  was  which 
was  thus  said  to  be  contrary  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Church 
of  England.  There  was  nothing  but  the  vaguest  and  most 
indefinite  expressions,  which  indefiniteness  was  increased 
by  the  statement  that  the  teaching  of  the  Essays  was  con- 
trary to  that  "  held  in  common  with  the  whole  Catholic 
Church  of  Christ."  There  was  no  definition  of  what  was 
meant  by  the  words  "the  Catholic  Church  of  Christ"  in 
this  sentence.  These  are  merely  general  terms,  and  they 
have  no  meaning  at  all  unless'  they  are  defined.  The 
charges  brought  are  general  charges,  that  cannot  be  dis- 
proved because  they  are  not  attempted  to  be  proved.  It 
has  been  said  that  the  greatest  blunder  of  which  a  theolo- 
gian can  be  guilty  is  ambiguity.  I  fully  concur  in  this  ;  but 
if  ambiguity  is  the  greatest  blunder  of  which  an  individual 

^  Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  June  22nd,  1864,  pp.  1756-57. 


i88 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


theologian  can  be  guilty,  what  must  be  the  case  when  this 
ambiguity  is  the  main  characteristic  of  that  which  pro- 
fesses to  be  a  formal  synodical  decision  ? 

'.  .  .  My  second  objection  to  the  judgment  is  that  it  is 
undiscriminating.  It  is  an  undiscriminating  judgment 
upon  a  book  of  most  unequal  and  varied  merits.  It  is  a 
book  composed  by  seven  different  writers — seven  gentle- 
men of  different  characters,  capacities,  and  attainments. 
Each  has  its  own  characteristic  merits.  It  is  a  book  partly 
good  and  partly  bad ;  and  yet  there  is  absolutely,  both  in 
this  judgment  and  the  reports  upon  which  it  is  founded,  no 
indication  whatever  that  there  is  any  variety  of  style  or 
temper  between  the  different  Essayists,  no  indication  of 
any  one  being  more  orthodox  or  less  orthodox  than  another. 
There  is  no  attempt  to  do  what  in  the  commonest  literary 
review  in  a  periodical  would  be  done.  A  periodical  would 
think  it  necessary  to  its  mere  honesty  of  character  that  it 
should  make  some  discrimination  between  the  different 
parts  and  the  different  writers  of  such  a  book.  But  in  this 
judgment  they  are  treated  all  in  a  lump,  and  all  are  equally 
worthy  of  condemnation.' 

Dealing  with  his  third  point,  he  uses  a  characteristic 
argument.  Nothing  in  ecclesiastical  controversy  pained  him 
more  deeply  than  the  respect  paid  to  persons  —  the  liberty 
which  was  conceded  to  prosperous  dignitaries  and  denied 
to  the  friendless  and  the  absent.  'This  judgment,'  he  says, 

'  is  essentially  unfair.  By  unfairness  I  do  not  mean  only 
general  unfairness  —  though  of  that  there  is  avast  amount 
—  but  more  specifically  I  mean,  that  it  deals  out  a  different 
measure  of  justice  to  the  same  offence,  condemning  in  one 
class  of  persons  what  it  acquits  in  another.  The  offence, 
if  it  be  one,  which  you  meet  in  this  book  you  meet  with  in 
other  books.  ...  In  a  book  which  I  myself  published 
twenty  years  ago  there  are,  as  I  have  already  said,  expres- 
sions which  substantially  contain  the  principles  condemned 
in  the  extracts  from  these  Essays  in  the  reports  of  both 
Houses  of  Convocation  on  the  composition  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, on  the  date  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  on  the  relative 
value  of  internal  and  external  evidence,  on  the  sacrifice  of 

1"  Ibid.,  June  24th,  1864,  pp.  1784-85. 

11  The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Arnold. 


CHAP.  XXI  SPEECH  ON  'ESSAYS  AND  REVIEWS'         1 89 


Isaac.  But  if  no  synodical  judgment  has  been  proposed 
or  attempted  in  regard  to  that  book,  it  is  manifestly  unfair 
that  passages  containing  substantially  the  same  principles 
should  be  passed  over  in  perfect  silence  in  the  one 
case,  and  should  be  singled  out  for  condemnation  in  the 
other.  It  surely  ought  not  to  be  that  the  one  book  has 
been  condemned  as  heterodox  because  its  publication  was 
accompanied  by  panic,  clamour,  and  alarm,  and  the  other 
passed  by  because  from  accidental  circumstances  it  pro- 
duced no  panic,  clamour,  or  alarm.  Is  this  assembly  to  be 
guided,  not  by  the  calm  justice  of  our  serener  hours,  but 
by  the  clamour  of  the  moment,  and  are  we  to  say  that  we 
will  surrender  our  judgments  entirely  to  the  play  of  acci- 
dental circumstances But  there  is  yet  a  more  signal 
vmfairness  than  this.  I  maintain  that  the  judgment  con- 
demns statements  and  principles  which  some  of  the  framers 
of  that  judgment  have  themselves  promulgated  or  edited. 

' .  .  .  The  fourth  objection  that  I  have  to  urge  against  the 
judgment  is  that  it  is  nugatory.  If  it  is  an  evil  to  pass  a 
judgment  that  is  ambiguous,  undiscriminating,  and  unfair, 
there  is  one  consolation,  that  it  is  entirely  nugatory.  It 
has  been  well  shown  by  the  Archdeacon  of  Coventry  and 
others  that  all  synodical  censures  in  this  age  will  be  futile. 
But  I  contend  that  this  particular  judgment  will  come 
before  the  world,  not  only  as  futile,  but,  to  use  the  words  of 
De  Quincey,  as  a  "  superfetation  of  futility."  If  the  synodi- 
cal judgment  passed  on  this  book  be  not  illegal  in  form,  it 
is  illegal  in  this  sense  —  that,  if  it  means  anything  at  all, 
it  asserts  that  to  be  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  England 
which  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  has  asserted  not  to  be 
the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  that  it  asserts 
that  to  be  contrary  to  the  teaching  of  the  Church  of 
England  which  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  has  asserted 
not  to  be  contrary  to  its  teaching.  .  .  .' 

He  concludes  with  the  following  words  : 

'  I  yield  to  no  man,  God  being  my  helper,  in  the  earnest 
desire  to  uphold  the  honour  of  Him  who  is  perfect  Truth, 
perfect  Justice,  and  perfect  Love.  I  am  not  in  the  habit 
of  using  sacred  names  on  these  occasions  —  and  this  occasion 
is  below  the  use  of  sacred  terms,  which  ought  to  occur  to 

12  Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  June  24th,  1864,  pp.  1788-89. 
1*  Ibid.  p.  1 790. 


190 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


us  only  in  the  most  solemn  temper  and  frame  of  mind  — 
but  I  will  say  that  it  is  for  the  sake  of  that  faith,  and  in 
defence  of  that  most  holy  Name,  that  I  do  myself  protest, 
and  I  call  upon  others  to  protest  against  —  I  will  not  call 
it,  because  it  is  not  a  phrase  that  ought  to  be  applied  to 
any  mere  human  or  ecclesiastical  judgment,  "a  miserable 
and  soul-destroying  judgment"^*;  I  will  content  myself 
with  calling  it,  as  I  have  proved  it  to  be,  an  ambiguous,  an 
indiscriminate,  an  unfair,  and  therefore  an  iniquitous,  judg- 
ment.' 

Another  struggle  in  which  Stanley  took  a  prominent  and 
unpopular  part  was  that  which  centred  round  the  name  of 
Bishop  Colenso.  The  controversy  was  one  in  which  he 
engaged,  if  not  single-handed,  at  least  with  a  very  scanty 
following.  The  part  which  he  played  in  the  conflict  affords, 
therefore,  a  still  stronger  illustration  of  his  chivalry  and 
courage.  He  had  scarcely  any  personal  acquaintance  with 
Bishop  Colenso,  and  no  personal  sympathy  with  the  form 
of  his  work.  It  is  unnecessary  to  enter  into  the  merits  of 
the  complicated  questions  at  issue  between  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown  and  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  It  will  be  sufficient 
here  to  state  only  those  facts  which  serve  to  explain  the 
position  adopted  by  Stanley  towards  Bishop  Gray  and 
Bishop  Colenso. 

In  February  1863  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation 
requested  the  Upper  House,  and  the  Upper  House  agreed, 
to  appoint  a  committee  to  consider  the  character  of  Bishop 
Colenso's  writings.  In  the  following  May  the  committee 
reported  that  the  obnoxious  volumes  contained  '  errors  of 
the  gravest  and  most  dangerous  character,'  and  the  report, 
after  being  accepted  by  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation, 
was  sent  up  to  the  Upper  House.  But  the  Upper  House 
declined  to  act  upon  the  report,  on  the  ground  that  the 

The  reference  is  to  the  words  in  which  Pusey  had  spoken  of  the  judgment 
of  the  Privy  Council. 

Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  June  24th,  1864,  p.  1792. 


CHAP.  XXI      BISHOP  COLENSO'S  DEPOSITION 


191 


books  which  were  impugned  were  '  shortly  to  be  submitted 
to  the  consideration  of  an  Ecclesiastical  Court.'  Proceed- 
ings against  Bishop  Colenso's  writings  were,  in  fact,  already 
taken.  On  July  ist,  1863,  Bishop  Colenso  was  formally 
cited  to  appear  in  the  following  November  before  Bishop 
Gray,  who,  acting  in  what  he  believed  to  be  his  inherent 
right  as  Metropolitan  of  Capetown,  claimed  jurisdiction 
over  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  The  trial  began  at  Capetown 
in  November  1863.  Bishop  Colenso  did  not  appear,  but 
contented  himself  with  protesting  against  Bishop  Gray's 
jurisdiction  and  giving  notice  of  appeal  in  case  jurisdiction 
was  assumed  and  judgment  delivered.  Bishop  Gray  pro- 
ceeded to  hear  the  case,  and  on  December  i6th,  1863,  de- 
livered judgment  and  pronounced  sentence.  The  words  of 
the  sentence  were : 

*  We  do  hereby  sentence,  adjudge,  and  decree  the  said 
Bishop  of  Natal  to  be  deposed  from  the  said  office  as  such 
Bishop,  and  to  be  further  prohibited  from  the  exercise  of 
any  Divine  office  within  any  part  of  the  Metropolitical 
Province  of  Capetown.' 

Four  months'  grace  was  given  to  Bishop  Colenso  to 
retract  what  he  had  written  and  to  express  repentance.  The 
incriminated  Bishop  took  no  action,  and  when  the  interval 
had  expired  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  proceeded  to  Natal 
and  took  charge  of  the  Diocese  as  vacant. 

The  Bishop  of  Natal  now  appealed  to  the  Queen  in 
Council  on  the  question  whether  his  trial  and  deposition 
were  legal.  The  case  was  heard  before  the  Judicial  Com- 
mittee of  the  Privy  Council,  and  on  March  20th,  1865,  the 
Lord  Chancellor  delivered  judgment  in  favour  of  Dr. 
Colenso,  holding  that  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  had  no 
coercive  jurisdiction,  and  that,  therefore,  the  proceedings 
he  had  taken,  and  the  sentence  he  had  pronounced,  were 
'null  and  void  in  law.'    'If  Colenso,'  wrote  Stanley  to 


192 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Pearson,  '  has  any  real  stuff  in  him,  he  will  return  at  once 
to  his  work  at  Natal.'  This  was  the  course  which  the  Bishop 
pursued.  Landing  at  Durban  in  November  1865,  he  re- 
sumed his  official  duties.  The  Bishop  of  Capetown  at  once 
pronounced  a  solemn  sentence  of  '  the  greater  excommuni- 
cation,' and  caused  it  to  be  read  in  the  Cathedral  of  the 
Diocese  of  Natal.  The  sentence  declared  '  John  William 
Colenso '  to  be  '  separated  from  the  communion  of  the 
Church  of  Christ,'  and  'to  be  taken  of  the  whole  multitude 
of  the  faithful  as  a  heathen  man  and  a  publican.' 

Dr.  Colenso's  case  appealed  from  many  sides  and  in 
the  strongest  manner  to  Stanley.  The  causes,  as  he  be- 
lieved, of  freedom  of  inquiry,  of  justice,  of  the  supremacy  of 
law,  of  the  union  of  Church  and  State,  were  involved  in  the 
struggle.  Although  the  Bishop's  peculiar  style  of  criticism 
was  in  many  ways  repugnant  to  his  taste  and  feeling  — 
although  he  himself  approached  the  Scriptures  with  the 
very  opposite  object  of  drawing  from  them  whatever  they 
contained  of  elevation,  of  religious  instruction,  of  experi- 
ence, of  the  counsel  of  God,  of  knowledge  of  the  human 
heart,  of  poetry,  and  of  history  —  yet  he  esteemed  the 
author  of  the  Commentaries  on  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
Book  of  Joshua  as  a  conscientious  searcher  after  truth.  It 
was  not  the  results,  but  the  lawfulness,  of  the  inquiry  which 
he  defended,  and  he  identified  the  Bishop's  cause  with  the 
right  of  the  clergy  to  ascertain  the  nature,  and  test  the 
grounds,  of  the  value  they  attached  to  the  Bible.  He  was 
indignant  at  the  spirit  in  which  hard  names  were  hurled  at 
the  head  of  an  absent  and  friendless  man,  and  in  which 
hundreds  of  pages  were  written  to  confute  what  was  never 
asserted,  and  to  assign  inferences  that  were  never  admitted. 
On  Dr.  Colenso's  fate  depended,  as  he  thought,  the  union 
of  the  Colonial  Churches  with  the  State  of  England,  as 
well  as  the  claims  of  the  Colonial  clergy  to  be  judged,  not 


CHAP.  XXI  SPEECH  ON  COLEATSO,  1865 


193 


by  irresponsible  Metropolitans,  but  by  English  laws.  It  is 
not,  therefore,  surprising  that,  throughout  the  subsequent 
proceedings  in  Convocation,  Bishop  Colenso  found  in 
Stanley  an  untiring  champion. 

On  June  28th,  1865,  the  Lower  House  of  the  Convoca- 
tion of  Canterbury,  without  any  formal  notice  of  the  pro- 
posed resolution,  was  asked  to  concur  in  an  Address  of  the 
Upper  House  expressing  '  hearty  admiration  of  the  courage, 
firmness,  and  devoted  love  of  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  as 
this  Church  has  received  the  same '  with  which  the  South 
African  bishops  had  opposed  'heretical  and  false  doctrine.' 
Stanley  strongly  opposed  the  resolution,  which  involved 
grave  theological  questions  as  well  as  legal  points  of 
considerable  intricacy.    '  Am  I  to  understand,'  he  asked, 

'that  this  House  has  made  up  its  mind  on  the  question  that 
it  is  unlawful  for  a  clergyman,  a  prelate  of  the  Church  of 
England,  to  deny  the  Mosaic  origin  of  any  portion  of  the 
Pentateuch .''  I  wish  the  House  to  consider  that  that  is 
the  position  we  take  up  —  that  to  question  any  portion  of 
the  Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pentateuch,  in  our  judgment, 
excludes  anyone  from  holding  any  office  in  the  Church  of 
England.  Again,  we  mean  also,  by  concurring  in  this 
Address,  to  declare  that  we  have  made  up  our  minds  that  it 
is  unlawful  for  any  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England  to 
hold  the  opinion  concerning  future  punishment  which  was 
held  by  Origen  and  by  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  and  that  any 
person  who  holds  such  opinion  cannot  hold  any  office  within 
the  Church  of  England.  Again,  we  are  called  upon  to 
assert  that  we  have  made  up  our  minds  that  any  person  who 
holds  the  views  on  the  Atonement  that  were  held  by 
Alexander  Knox,  that  were  held  by  William  Law,  that  were 
held  by  Coleridge,  that  were  held  by  St.  Anselm  and  by 
St.  Chrysostom,  may  not  hold  any  office  in  the  Church  of 
England.  We  may  have  made  up  our  minds  on  the 
subject,  but  I  ask  if  this  is  certainly  the  case  Again,  not 
having  the  Judgment  of  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  before  me, 
which  is  one  of  the  inconveniences  of  this  matter  being 
brought  before  us  on  so  short  a  notice,  I  am  not  aware 
whether  the  question  of  the  salvation  of  good  heathens  was 
VOL.  II  O 


194 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


involved,  but  I  think  it  was.  Now,  are  we  prepared  to  say 
that  no  clergyman  is  justified  in  holding  an  office  in  the 
Church  of  England  who  believes  in  the  possibility  of  the 
salvation  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Socrates  ?  I  have  not 
the  Judgment  before  me,  but  I  think  that  is  the  proposition 
to  which  we  should  be  pledged.  Again,  are  we  prepared 
to  say  that  it  is  unlawful  for  any  clergyman  who  maintains 
that  any  portions  of  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis  are  to  be 
taken  in  any  other  than  a  strict  historical  meaning  to  retain 
office  in  the  Church  of  England  .'' ' 

A  year  later  (June  1866)  similar  resolutions  were 
suddenly  brought,  without  notice,  before  Convocation,  on 
the  last  day  but  one  of  its  sittings,  and  when  some  of  its 
most  important  members  had  dispersed.  The  Lower 
House  was  asked  to  concur  in  a  resolution 

'that  Dr.  Colenso,  having  been  not  only  excommunicated 
by  the  Bishop  of  Capetown  and  the  Bishops  of  South  Africa 
with  him  in  Synod,  but  also  deposed  from  his  office  of 
bishop,  if  a  bishop  shall  be  duly  elected  and  consecrated 
for  the  See  of  Natal  in  the  place  of  Bishop  Colenso,  the 
Church  of  England  would  of  necessity  hold  communion 
with  that  bishop.' 

Stanley  opposed  the  resolution  with  all  the  vigour  at 
his  command.  He  pointed  out  the  legal  difficulties  it 
involved.  He  insisted  on  its  fatal  consequences  to  the 
freedom  and  independence  of  the  Colonial  Church,  if  its 
clergy  were  to  be  abandoned,  bound  hand  and  foot,  to  the 
mercy  of  their  Metropolitan.  He  urged  its  theological 
effects,  reviewing  seriatim  the  six  grounds  on  which  Dr. 
Colenso  had  been  excommunicated.  If  one  charge  were 
affirmed,  then  'a  canonized  saint'  of  the  Church  like 
Gregory  of  Nyssa  was  'an  excommunicated  heretic';  if 
another,  then  '  English  divines  and  bishops  of  unquestioned 
orthodoxy '  shared  in  the  same  condemnation.  If  this  pro- 
position were   accepted,  then  'hundreds,  I   might  say 

16  Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  June  28th,  1865,  p.  2383. 


CHAP.  XXI  SPEECH  ON  COLENSO,  1866 


thousands,  of  clergymen  in  England  '  are  equally  guilty ; 
if  that  doctrine  were  confirmed,  then  Jeremy  Taylor  and 
Athanasius  must  be  pronounced  to  be  heretics.  Nor  did 
he  shrink  from  adopting  the  personal  consequences  of  his 
defence  of  the  '  unfriended  and  the  absent.'  He  challenged 
his  hearers  to  attack  '  the  well-friended  and  the  present.' 
*  I  might,'  he  says, 

'  mention  one  who,  although  on  some  of  these  awful  and 
mysterious  questions  he  has  expressed  no  direct  opinion, 
yet  has  ventured  to  say  that  the  Pentateuch  is  not  the 
work  of  Moses ;  who  has  ventured  to  say  that  there  are 
parts  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  which  are  poetical  and  not 
historical ;  who  has  ventured  to  say  that  the  Holy  Scriptures 
themselves  rise  infinitely  by  our  being  able  to  acknowledge 
both  that  poetical  character  and  also  the  historical  incidents 
in  their  true  historical  reality ;  who  has  ventured  to  say 
that  the  narratives  of  those  historical  incidents  are  coloured, 
not  unfrequently,  by  the  necessary  infirmities  which  belong 
to  the  human  instruments  by  which  they  are  conveyed  — 
and  that  individual  is  the  one  who  now  addresses  you.  I 
am  not  unwilling  to  take  my  place  with  Gregory  of  Nyssa, 
with  Jerome,  and  with  Athanasius.  But  in  that  same 
goodly  company  I  shall  find  the  despised  and  rejected 
Bishop  of  Natal.  At  least  deal  out  the  same  measure  to 
me  that  you  deal  to  him  ;  at  least  judge  for  all  a  righteous 
judgment.' 

The  South  African  controversy  had  now  entered  on  a 
new  stage,  which,  though  not  immediately  connected  with 
Convocation,  led  indirectly  to  one  of  Stanley's  most 
unpopular  acts  as  Dean  of  Westminster.  Dr.  Colenso  had 
resumed  his  work  in  his  diocese.  Writing  to  him  on  the 
eve  of  his  departure  from  England,  Stanley  said  : 

'  I  have  every  hope  of  your  success  on  your  return  if 
you  are  able  to  fulfil  the  three  promises  held  out  in  the 

^'  The  speech  was  published  in  pamphlet  form  during  the  Pan-Anglican 
Conference  at  Lambeth  in  September  1867,  under  the  title  of  The  South 
African  Controversy  in  its  Relations  to  the  Church  of  England.  London, 
1867,  8vo. 


196 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Preface  to  the  fifth  part  of  your  book  on  the  Pentateuch, 
and  in  your  address,  namely —  (i)  entire  abstinence  from 
the  controversial  and  denunciatory  acts  and  words  of  your 
opponents ;  (2)  entire  toleration  of  the  different  opinions 
and  practices  of  the  clergy  under  your  control  who  take 
other  views  than  your  own  of  their  duty;  and  (3),  chief  of 
all,  confidence  that  you  have  a  true  mission  and  large 
sphere  before  you  as  a  bishop,  if  not  as  a  missionary,  but 
better  far  if  both  together,  amongst  the  laity  and  the 
natives,  if  not  amongst  the  clergy  of  Natal. 

'  No  ecclesiastic  can,  in  our  day,  or,  perhaps,  in  any  day, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  maintain  his  position  without  having 
such  a  sphere,  independent  of  the  success  of  his  own  par- 
ticular views.  With  such  a  sphere,  and  with  a  spirit  at  once 
of  courage  and  toleration,  we  may,  with  God's  help,  defy 
the  world.' 

The  return  of  Dr.  Colenso  made  Bishop  Gray  the  more 
desirous  of  procuring  the  election  and  consecration  of  a  new 
Bishop  of  Natal  in  the  room  of  the  man  whom,  in  spite  of 
the  decision  of  the  Privy  Council,  he  treated  as  deposed 
and  excommunicated.  The  English  prelates,  on  the  other 
hand,  recommended  caution  and  delay.  Even  those  who 
sympathised  with  Bishop  Gray  were  not  clearly  convinced 
that  any  new  election  would  be  canonical,  or  would  be  so 
recognised,  either  in  South  Africa  or  in  England.  The 
affairs  of  the  Colonial  Church,  and  its  relations  to  the 
mother-Church  were,  in  fact,  so  entangled  that  it  was 
difficult  to  define  the  exact  validity  and  force  of  the 
credentials  of  the  Colonial  Episcopate.  There  were  colonies 
with  distinct  varieties  of  civil  constitution  and  jurispru- 
dence ;  bishops  with,  and  bishops  without,  Royal  Patents  ; 
dioceses,  some  with  recognised,  some  with  unrecognised, 
Church  Synods,  and  others  with  none  at  all ;  and  decisions 
of  English  Courts  only  increased  the  confusion  by  conflict- 
ing one  with  another.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
Canadian  Synod  urged  a  gathering  of  Anglican  bishops  for 
consultation  and  advice,  and  some  of  the  American  bishops 


CHAP.  XXI 


THE  PAN-ANGL/CAiV  SYNOD 


expressed  a  wish  that  the  daughter-Church  across  the 
Atlantic  should  be  admitted  to  the  proposed  Conference. 
The  suggestion  was  accepted  by  the  Canterbury  House 
of  Convocation.  In  February  1867  Archbishop  Longley 
invited  the  whole  Anglican  Episcopate  to  meet  at  Lambeth 
in  the  following  September. 

Stanley,  from  the  first,  feared  that  the  influence  of 
the  Conference  would  be  used  in  favour  of  the  Bishop  of 
Capetown,  and  of  some  modification  of  the  constitution  and 
government  of  the  Church.  He  also  strongly  deprecated 
any  secret  deliberations.  When  the  proposal  for  a  Con- 
ference came  before  Convocation  in  February  1866,  he 
expressed  his  hope  that,  if  the  bishops  were  to  assemble  at 
Lambeth  for  any  other  purpose  than  the  interchange  of 
friendly  sympathy,  '  their  proceedings  would  be  open  and 
public'  Nor  did  he  stand  alone  in  his  fears.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  York  and  the  bishops  of  the  Northern  Province, 
as  well  as  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough,  declined  to  attend 
the  Conference,  and  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  was  only 
present  on  the  express  condition  that  the  question  of 
Bishop  Colenso's  position  should  not  be  debated. 

No  sooner  had  the  Conference  assembled  than  it  became 
evident  that  the  pledge  of  excluding  the  Natal  difficulty 
from  the  discussion  could  not  be  kept.  At  the  preliminary 
meeting  the  attempt  was  made  to  bring  the  question 
forward,  and  on  more  than  one  occasion  the  topic  was 
reintroduced.  On  the  fourth  day  the  Bishop  of  Capetown 
made  a  determined  effort  to  procure  from  the  assembled 
bishops  their  sanction  to  the  consecration  of  a  new  Bishop 
of  Natal.  He  even  threatened  to  resign  his  see  if  his  pro- 
posal were  rejected.  After  a  heated  debate,  a  hypothetical 
resolution  was  adopted  declaring  that,  if  a  new  bishop 
were  consecrated,  there  would  be  no  necessary  severance  of 
communion  between  the  Home  and  the  Colonial  Church. 


198 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


This  resolution  was  interpreted  by  Bishop  Gray  to  mean 
that  the  Conference  had  given  its  approval  to  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  new  bishop.  Such  a  misunderstanding,  which 
could  hardly  have  arisen  unless  the  proceedings  had  been 
secret,  may  be  thought  to  have  justified  Stanley's  demand 
for  complete  publicity.  '  The  misstatements  of  the  Bishop 
of  Capetown's  letter,'  he  writes  to  BishojD  Ewing,'  combined 
with  the  enthusiasm  which,  in  spite  of  them,  he  excites, 
remind  me  more  of  the  influence  of  Habakkuk  Mucklevvrath 
over  the  Covenanters  than  anything  that  I  have  ever  seen 
in  my  time.' 

The  Conference  concluded  with  a  special  service. 
Before  the  opening  of  the  proceedings  the  Archbishop 
expressed  a  wish  to  hold  this  service  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  In  the  uncertainty  that  Stanley  felt  as  to  the  pur- 
poses for  which  the  Conference  was  summoned,  he  feared 
that  it  might  be  used  for  party  objects,  such  as  giving 
support  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  repudiating  the 
Judgment  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  confirming  the  alleged 
deposition  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  He  therefore  declined 
to  promise  the  use  of  the  building  for  the  proposed  special 
service,  though  he  offered  it  for  other  objects  indicated  in 
the  following  correspondence  : 

'  Deanery,  Westminster  :  Sept.  21st,  1867. 

'  My  dear  Lord  Archbishop,  —  I  have  been  honoured 
with  a  communication  from  your  Grace,  through  the  Bishop 
of  London,  requesting  the  use  of  Westminster  Abbey  for  a 
special  service  to  be  held  for  the  English,  American,  and 
Scottish  bishops  now  assembled  in  England  —  to  be  held, 
as  I  understood,  on  September  28. 

'On  all  occasions  it  is  my  earnest  desire  to  render  the 
Abbey  and  the  precincts  of  Westminster  available  for 
purposes  of  general  utility  and  edification,  and  this  desire 
is  increased  when  the  request  comes  from  your  Grace. 

'  You  will  kindly  allow  me  to  state  the  difficulty  which 

18  From  the  Guardian,  October  9th,  1S67,  p.  1071. 


CHAP.  XXI 


THE  PAN-ANGLICAN  SYNOD 


199 


I  feel  in  the  present  instance.  I  have  endeavoured  to  act 
in  such  matters  on  the  rule  of  granting  the  use  of  the 
Abbey  to  such  purposes,  and  such  only,  as  are  either  co- 
extensive with  the  Church  of  England,  or  have  a  definite 
object  of  usefulness  or  charity,  apart  from  party  or  polemi- 
cal considerations. 

'  Your  Grace  will,  I  am  sure,  see  that,  however  much 
your  Grace's  intentions  would  have  brought  the  proposed 
Conference  at  Lambeth  within  this  sphere,  in  fact  it  can 
hardly  be  so  considered.  The  absence  of  the  Primate  and 
the  larger  part  of  the  bishops  of  the  Northern  Province,  not 
to  speak  of  the  bishops  of  India  and  Australia,  and  of  other 
important  colonial  or  missionary  sees,  must,  even  irre- 
spectively of  other  indications,  cause  it  to  present  a  partial 
aspect  of  the  English  Church  ;  whilst  the  appearance  of 
other  prelates,  not  belonging  to  our  Church,  places  it  on  a 
different  footing  from  the  institutions  which  are  confined 
to  the  Church  of  England.  And,  further,  the  absence  of 
any  fixed  information  as  to  the  objects  to  be  discussed  and 
promoted  by  the  Conference  leaves  me,  in  common  with 
all  who  stand  outside,  in  uncertainty  as  to  what  would  be 
the  proposals  or  measures  which  would  receive,  by  impli- 
cation, the  sanction  given  by  the  use  of  the  Abbey  —  a 
sanction  which,  in  the  case  of  a  church  so  venerable  and 
national  in  its  character,  ought,  I  conceive,  to  be  lent  only 
to  public  objects  of  well-defined  or  acknowledged  bene- 
ficence. 

'  These  are  the  grounds  why  I  hesitate  to  take  upon 
myself  the  responsibility  suggested.  But,  when  stating 
this  difficulty,  I  feel  so  strongly  the  value  of  the  friendly 
intercourse,  to  promote  which  has  been  the  chief  intention 
of  your  Grace,  and  of,  I  doubt  not,  many  of  the  prelates 
who  have  concurred  in  this  Conference,  and  I  am  so 
desirous  that  the  Abbey  shall  be  made  to  minister  to  the 
edification  of  large  sections  of  our  Church,  even  when  not 
representing  the  whole,  and  of  those  outside  our  own 
immediate  pale  (especially  our  brethren  from  America) 
who  are  willing  to  co-operate  with  us  in  all  things  lawful 
and  good,  that  I  would  gladly,  if  possible,  join  in  advancing 
such  a  purpose. 

*  It  has  occurred  to  me  that,  as  the  service  indicated  by 
your  Grace  is  to  be  held  after  the  Conference  is  finished, 
the  Abbey  might  be  granted  for  it  without  any  relation  to 


200 


LIFE  OF  DEAJV  STANLEY 


the  Conference  itself  ;  but  either  for  some  specific  object, 
such  as  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  or 
for  other  home  or  foreign  missions  of  unquestioned  im- 
portance, or  else  (in  those  general  terms  which,  as  I  appre- 
hend, express  your  Grace's  wishes)  for  the  promotion  of 
brotherly  good-will  and  mutual  edification  amongst  all 
members  of  the  Anglican  communion. 

'  Under  these  circumstances,  and  on  this  understanding, 
which  I  should  wish  to  be  made  as  public  as  the  announce- 
ment of  the  service  itself,  I  should  have  great  pleasure  in 
permitting  the  use  of  the  Abbey  for  such  a  service  to  be 
held  in  the  morning  or  afternoon  of  September  28  (as  may 
be  deemed  most  convenient)  ;  and  I  trust  that,  if  this  meets 
your  Grace's  wishes,  your  Grace  will  undertake  to  preach 
on  the  occasion. 

*  I  beg  to  remain, 

'  My  dear  Lord  Archbishop, 

'  Yours  faithfully  and  respectfully, 

'  A.  P.  Stanley.' 

'  Addington  Park,  Croydon  :  Sept.  25th,  1867. 

'  My  dear  Dean,  —  I  laid  your  note  before  the  Confer- 
ence yesterday,  but  it  will  probably  not  close  its  sittings 
on  Friday  evening,  as  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  com- 
mittees will  be  appointed  to  report  at  a  future  date.  Under 
these  circumstances,  it  is  obvious  from  the  tenor  of  your 
letter  that  the  Abbey  is  not  open  to  us.  I  regret,  therefore, 
that  we  shall  not  be  able  to  avail  ourselves  of  your  kind 
offer  under  the  specified  conditions. 

'  Believe  me,  my  dear  Dean, 

'  Yours  very  truly, 

'  C.  T.  Cantuar.' 

'Deanery,  Westminster:  Sept.  27th,  1867. 

'  My  dear  Lord  Archbishop,  —  I  have  to  acknowledge, 
with  thanks,  your  Grace's  letter  of  the  25th,  and  to  express 
my  regret  that  your  Grace  and  the  bishops  assembled 
should  have  felt  themselves  precluded  from  accepting  my 
proposal  —  in  reply  to  your  Grace's  request  —  to  meet  in  the 
Abbey  for  "some  specific  object"  of  charity  or  usefulness, 
"or  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  brotherly  good-will  and 
mutual  edification  amongst  all  members  of  the  Anglican 
communion." 


CHAP.  XXI 


THE  PAN-ANGLICAN  SYNOD 


20 1 


'  I  beg,  however,  that  you  will  assure  the  prelates 
assembled,  especially  those  of  our  American  brethren  for 
whose  sake,  as  I  stated  in  my  former  letter,  I  especially 
proposed  to  grant  the  use  of  the  Abbey  as  before  men- 
tioned, that  if  they,  or  any  of  them,  should  wish  to  attend 
the  services  in  the  Abbey  on  Sunday  next  (at  10  a.m.  or 
at  3  P.M.),  every  accommodation  and  welcome  shall  be 
afforded. 

'  I  beg  to  remain, 

'  My  dear  Lord  Archbishop, 

'  Yours  faithfully  and  respectfully, 

'  A.  P.  Stanley.' 

Stanley's  refusal  to  allow  the  use  of  Westminster  Abbey 
was  severely  criticised  by  the  religious  press.  '  The  Guar- 
dian,' he  writes  to  his  sister  Mary  on  October  6th,  1867, 

'when  it  complains  of  my  refusal  of  the  Abbey,  might  have 
had  the  grace  to  acknowledge  that  I  offered  it  for  the  only 
legitimate  purposes  of  the  Conference,  and  that  this  offer  was 
declined.  The  Archbishop  so  mismanaged  the  announce- 
ment of  my  offer  that  the  Americans  never  understood  it, 
and  went  off  furious.  I  have  written  a  letter  to  the  senior 
American  bishop  trying  to  explain  their  misapprehension.' 

In  his  letter  to  Bishop  Hopkins,  of  Vermont,  Stanley 
alludes  to  the  death  of  Sir  Frederick  Bruce,  the  British 
Minister  at  Washington,  and  his  brother-in-law,  which 
occurred  in  September  1867,  and  the  news  of  which  reached 
the  Deanery  at  the  time  when  the  Conference  opened.  He 
also  explained  why  he  had  refused  the  use  of  the  Abbey  to 
the  Conference  as  a  body,  and  offered  it  to  the  individual 
members  for  purposes  in  which  the  whole  nation  could 
sympathise.  The  Pan-Anglican  Synod  had  been  opposed 
from  the  outset  by  some  of  the  ablest  men  in  the  Church, 
in  consideration  of  the  dangerous,  because  indefinite  and 
secret,  character  which  such  an  assembly  must  assume, 
unless  convoked  by  lawful  authority  and  conducted  with 
publicity.    The  Conference  could  not,  in  Stanley's  opinipn, 


202 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1867 


be  considered  as  a  fair  representative  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  he  refused  to  open  to  its  members  the  doors 
of  Westminster  Abbey  on  precisely  the  same  grounds  on 
which  he  would  have  refused  to  admit  any  association  in 
whose  representative  character  and  partisan  objects  he  had 
no  confidence.  To  take  any  other  course  would  have  been 
to  stultify  the  position  that  he  had  throughout  assumed. 

His  letter  to  Bishop  Hopkins,  and  the  Bishop's  reply, 
are  printed  below  : 

'  Deanery,  Westminster :  Oct.,  1867. 

'  My  Lord  Bishop,  —  Understanding  that  some  mis- 
apprehension exists  on  the  part  of  the  American  bishops 
as  to  their  invitation  to  a  service  in  Westminster  Abbey,  I 
beg  that  you  will  do  me  the  favour  of  communicating  the 
following  statement,  in  as  public  a  way  as  you  think  fit,  to 
your  episcopal  brethren. 

'  It  was  impossible  for  me,  as  guardian  of  a  building  like 
the  Abbey,  which  belongs  to  the  whole  Church  and  people 
of  England,  to  take  the  responsibility  of  giving  its  sanction 
to  a  meeting  that  included  only  a  portion  of  the  English 
bishops,  and  of  which  the  objects  were  undefined,  the  issues 
unknown,  and  the  discussions  secret.  But  I  was  so  anxious 
to  show  every  courtesy  to  the  bishops  from  the  United 
States,  that  chiefly  on  their  account,  as  I  particularly 
specified  in  my  letter  to  the  Archbishop,  I  deviated  so  far 
from  the  usual  rules  which  guide  the  services  in  the  Abbey 
as  to  propose  the  use  of  the  Abbey  for  a  service  which 
should  gather  them  there,  either  for  some  specific  object 
of  charity  or  usefulness,  or  for  the  general  promotion  of 
good-will  and  mutual  edification  of  all  members  of  the 
Anglican  communion.  I  was  encouraged  the  more  to 
make  this  offer  by  the  pledge  which  I  had  received,  that 
no  question  exciting  party  differences  should  be  introduced 
into  the  meeting,  and  I  was  therefore  in  hopes  that  his 
Grace  would  have  felt  himself  able  to  accept  a  proposal 
which  I  had  reason  to  believe  would  have  been  gratifying 
to  our  American  brethren. 

'  The  proposal  was,  however,  declined ;  and  I  must, 
therefore,  through  you,  beg  to  express  my  regret  that  such 
an  opportunity  was  lost  of  cultivating  that  feeling  of  amity 
between  the  two  countries  which  is  at  all  times  so  welcome. 


CHAP.  XXI         LETTER  TO  BISHOP  HOPKINS  203 


The  circumstance  of  the  severe  domestic  affliction  which 
has  recently  befallen  us,  whilst  it  prev'^ented  me  from 
showing  that  hospitality  which  I  should  otherwise  have 
offered  to  you,  makes  me  doubly  anxious  that  in  a  country 
from  which  we  have  received  expressions  of  such  sincere 
sympathy  there  should  be  no  misunderstanding  as  to  the 
cordial  desire  which  I  entertain  to  welcome  Americans  on 
all  occasions  to  our  great  national  sanctuary. 

*I  remain,  &c., 

'Arthur  P.  Stanley.' 

'  Burlington,  Vt. :  Nov.  9th,  1867. 

'Very  Rev.  and  dear  Sir, — Your  letter  of  October, 
addressed,  through  me,  to  all  the  American  bishops,  reached 
me  last  night,  and  I  have  sent  it  for  publication  to  the 
editor  of  "The  Church  Journal,"  New  York. 

'The  high  reputation  which  you  enjoy  as  an  author  of 
acknowledged  ability  concurs  with  your  elevated  position  as 
the  Dean  of  Westminster  to  give  importance  to  your  course 
in  withholding  the  use  of  the  venerable  Abbey  from  the 
Pan-Anglican  Council.  How  far  your  explanation  will  be 
satisfactory  to  my  respected  colleagues  it  is  not  for  me  to 
say  ;  but  with  regard  to  myself,  I  frankly  confess  that  I 
do  not  understand  it. 

'You  state,  as  the  reason  for  your  decision,  that  you  are 
the  guardian  of  the  Abbey,  which  belongs  to  the  whole 
Church  and  people  of  England,  and  that  you  could  not 
give  its  sanction  to  a  meeting  which  included  a  portion 
only  of  the  English  bishops,  and  of  which  the  objects 
were  undefined,  the  issues  unknown,  and  the  discussions 
secret. 

'  Here  are  several  points  to  which  I  cannot  assent  in 
accordance  with  true  Church  principle. 

'  In  a  certain  sense  it  may  be  said  that  the  Abbey,  and 
every  cathedral  —  nay,  even  every  parish  church,  belongs  to 
the  whole  Church  of  England.  But  in  the  strict  and  proper 
sense  of  jurisdiction,  the  Abbey  belongs  to  the  Diocese  of 
London  and  the  Province  of  Canterbury.  You  are,  indeed, 
the  Dean,  and,  so  far,  the  guardian  of  the  edifice  ;  but  I  do 
not  comprehend  how  this  can  discharge  the  vows  of  ordi- 
nation, which  bound  you  to  "obey  your  Bishop  "  and  Arch- 
bishop, and  "  follow,  with  a  glad  mind  and  will,  their  godly 
admonitions."    Nor  do  I  perceive  on  what  ground  of  eccle- 


204 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


siastical  law  you  thought  fit  to  take  a  course  directly  con- 
trary to  what  you  knew  to  be  their  design  in  holding  this 
important  Conference  of  bishops  from  every  quarter  of  the 
world.  The  call  was  given  by  your  own  Archbishop,  to 
whom  you  owe  respect  and  deference.  The  Council  was 
attended  by  your  own  Bishop,  to  whom  you  owe  canonical 
obedience.  It  was  fully  sanctioned  by  the  great  majority 
of  the  other  English  bishops.  It  had  the  express  approval 
of  the  Convocation  of  Canterbury,  to  which  you  belong. 
It  had  the  cordial  concurrence  of  the  archbishops  and 
bishops  of  Ireland,  the  metropolitans  and  bishops  of  the 
Colonies,  the  bishops  of  Scotland,  and  those  of  the  United 
States  ;  and  its  proceedings  were  marked  by  the  unanimous 
consent  of  the  whole.  Are  you,  on  any  ground  of  true 
Church  principle,  or  even  of  common-sense,  to  be  regarded 
as  the  representative  of  "  the  whole  Church  and  people  of 
England,"  in  withholding  the  use  of  the  venerable  Abbey 
from  an  assembly  like  this What  previous  meeting  of 
bishops  has  ever  been  held  within  its  walls  which  would 
bear  a  comparison  in  numbers  and  in  dignity  And  are 
you  by  virtue  of  your  office  as  the  Dean  an  absolute  auto- 
crat, to  deny,  in  opposition  to  your  own  Archbishop  and 
Bishop,  and  all  the  other  prelates  of  the  English  commu- 
nion, the  use  of  the  Abbey  by  the  Council  of  Lambeth,  on 
the  sole  pretext  that  some  three  or  four  of  the  bishops, 
who  have  no  authority  whatever  over  the  Diocese  of  Lon- 
don, thought  fit  to  dissent  from  the  judgment  of  all  their 
brethren 

'You  disapproved  the  Council  because  "its  objects  were 
undefined  and  its  issues  unknown."  I  pray  you  to  remem- 
ber, if  you  can,  any  Council  of  the  Church  whose  action 
could  be  known  beforehand.  Was  it  not  enough  to  be 
assured  that  an  assembly  called  by  your  own  Archbishop, 
and  consisting  of  the  bishops  of  the  Church,  could  not 
possibly  be  supposed  to  have  any  object,  or  arrive  at  any 
issue,  inconsistent  with  truth  and  duty?  Could  not  the 
Dean  of  Westminster  trust  seventy-six  prelates  of  the 
Church  with  the  care  of  her  sacred  interests Or  was  he 
really  justified  in  regarding  them  as  a  band  of  conspirators 
against  her  honour  and  dignity,  so  that  he  was  conscien- 
tiously compelled,  in  despite  of  all  real  canonical  principle, 
to  shut  his  Abbey  doors  against  them 

'This,  my  dear  sir,  is  the  position  in  which  your  strange 


CHAP.  XXI      LETTER  FROM  BISHOP  HOPKINS 


205 


course  has  placed  you,  in  my  humble  judgment.  You  will 
pardon  me,  I  trust,  for  speaking  plainly.  I  cannot  do 
otherwise  on  a  question  in  which  the  honour  of  the  Church 
is  concerned.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  I  think 
you  made  a  great  mistake,  and  that,  as -a  justification  of  it 
seems  altogether  impossible,  it  would  be  more  frank  and 
candid  on  your  part  to  call  it  by  its  proper  name,  and  let 
it  be  forgotten  as  soon  as  possible,  since  the  remembrance 
of  it  can  only  be  attended  with  mortification. 

'  Your  allusion  to  your  offer  to  receive  our  bishops,  pro- 
vided they  came  in  their  official  capacity  and  without  any 
connection  with  the  Council,  renders  it  proper  for  me  to 
say  that  the  invitation  thus  limited  was  unanimously  de- 
clined, as  being,  indeed,  an  assault  upon  the  Council,  and 
upon  ourselves  for  coming  to  attend  it.  I  am  very  willing 
to  suppose  that  you  did  not  so  intend  it ;  but  it  could 
hardly  admit  of  any  other  fair  construction. 

'  And  your  reference  to  your  own  domestic  affliction,  of 
which  I  had  heard  nothing  at  the  time,  while  it  certainly 
calls  on  me  for  sympathy,  and  furnishes  a  sufficient  apology 
for  the  absence  of  any  social  hospitality,  would  have  been 
better  made  when  we  were  on  the  spot,  since  then  we  could 
not  have  been  led  to  suppose  that  your  antipathy  to  the 
Council  was  the  cause  of  your  seeming  discourtesy. 

'  But  this,  being  merely  a  private  and  personal  matter,  is 
easily  explained,  and  could  not  be  the  ground  of  any  un- 
pleasant feeling.  I  am  persuaded  that  the  kind  and  cordial 
attention  which  our  bishops  received  from  other  quarters 
was  quite  as  great  as  we  could  have  expected  or  desired. 
And  we  had  certainly  no  reason  to  complain  of  any  failure 
in  English  hospitality. 

'  The  only  question  of  any  real  importance  is  the  very 
serious  one,  whether  the  Dean  of  Westminster  has  a  right, 
on  true  Church  principles,  to  withhold  the  Abbey  from  the 
meeting  of  a  Council  called  by  his  Archbishop  and  sanc- 
tioned by  his  own  Bishop  of  London.  The  question  extends 
itself  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  as  it  was  openly  stated  in 
Council  that  the  Bishop  had  no  power  to  tender  either  of 
those  buildings  for  the  closing  service  of  the  great  assembly, 
though  no  one  doubted  that  one  of  these  sacred  edifices 
would  have  been  the  proper  place  for  that  solemn  occasion. 

'If  the  Dean  possesses  such  a  right  —  if  the  Bishop  of 
London  has  no  power  over  the  use  of  the  Cathedral  of  St. 


2o6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Paul  or  Westminster  Abbey — I  must  distinctly  aver  that 
I  regard  the  fact  as  a  serious  blot  upon  the  ecclesiastical 
system  of  our  venerable  Mother-Church  of  England,  entirely 
inconsistent  with  primitive  practice,  and  existing  nowhere 
else  in  Christendom.  The  Bishop  is  the  rector-in-chief  of 
all  the  churches  in  the  diocese,  and  hence  the  promise  of 
obedience  to  his  godly  judgment  is  an  essential  part  of  the 
vows  made  in  ordination.  But  especially  is  he  the  rector- 
in-chief  of  his  own  cathedral,  which  is  the  place  containing 
his  official  seat,  and  called  cathedral  for  that  very  reason, 
because  the  Bishop's  chair  is  there. 

'  It  was  understood  in  the  Council  that  the  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's,  like  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  was  hostile  to  our 
assembly,  and  that  they  had  the  legal  authority  to  close, 
against  their  own  bishop  and  archbishop,  so  far  as  the  Con- 
ference at  Lambeth  was  concerned,  the  doors  of  both  the 
Cathedral  and  the  Abbey ;  and  this  is  what  I  stated  in  the 
beginning  that  I  could  not  understand.  Believing  that  our 
Mother-Church  is  truly  Catholic  in  all  her  essential  prin- 
ciples, I  certainly  do  not  understand  how  she  could  have 
fallen  into  so  flagrant  an  inconsistency  and  so  gross  a  de- 
parture from  ecclesiastical  law  and  order  as  they  existed 
universally  in  the  purest  ages  of  the  Christian  dispensation. 

'  I  trust  that  your  own  part  in  the  late  case  may  have 
the  good  result  of  turning  the  attention  of  the  Church  of 
England  to  this  anomaly,  and  restoring  to  the  bishops  those 
ancient  rights  in  their  own  cathedrals  and  quasi-cathedrals 
which  have  been  so  long  withheld.  It  is  this  hope  which 
has  led  me  to  write  so  much  at  large  upon  the  subject, 
because  it  is  one  which  deserves  the  serious  attention  of  all 
concerned.  For  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  affront 
was  not  offered  so  much  to  the  American  bishops  as  to 
your  own.  With  all  personal  respect  and  regard,  your 
faithful  brother  in  Christ, 

'John  H.  Hopkins, 

'  Bishop  bf  Vermont. 

'  To  the  Very  Rev.  the  Dean  of  Westminster." 

So  far  as  Stanley  was  concerned,  these  two  letters  closed 
the  incident.    '  I  shall,'  he  says, 

'  take  no  further  notice  of  the  Bishop  of  Vermont.  I  wrote 
to  him  what  was  meant  to  be  a  courteous  and  friendly  letter, 


CHAP.  XXI     LETTER  FROM  PHILLIPS  BROOKS 


207 


and  as  he  has  not  taken  it  as  such,  it  is  useless  to  continue 
the  correspondence.  His  ignorance  of  facts  will  be  palpable 
to  anyone  in  this  country,  and  to  many  in  his  own.' 

It  may  at  least  be  said  that  Bishop  Hopkins  did  not 
speak  the  universal  feeling  of  the  American  clergy.  His 
letter  was  repudiated  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of 
its  members,  the  Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trin- 
ity, in  Philadelphia.  The  late  Phillips  Brooks,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  at  that  time  almost  a  stranger  to 
Stanley,  wrote  at  once  to  protest  against  the  Bishop  of 
Vermont's  language.  '  I  have  just  happened,'  he  writes 
on  November  29th,  1867, 

'  to  see  in  the  "  Church  Journal  "  of  New  York  a  letter  from 
you  to  Bishop  Hopkins,  our  presiding  bishop,  with  his 
reply,  and  I  am  so  mortified  and  indignant  at  the  impu- 
dence and  ill-feeling  of  the  Bishop's  letter  that,  whatever 
may  be  the  liberty  I  take  in  doing  so,  I  cannot  help  sitting 
down  at  once  and  disowning  —  as  I  am  sure  I  may  do  for 
our  whole  Church  —  the  spirit  and  substance  of  his  melan- 
choly letter.  It  is  a  little  matter  to  you,  but  it  is  much  to 
us.  I,  for  one,  am  not  willing  that  my  Church  should  be 
so  misrepresented.  I  am  not  willing  that  you  should  for 
a  moment  think  that  it  is  the  Church  which  does  what  the 
Bishop  of  Vermont  has  done  —  answer  the  kind  courtesy  of 
your  note  to  him  by  personal  insults  and  impertinent  criti- 
cisms of  customs  with  which  he  had  nothing  in  the  world 
to  do.  I  beg  you  to  believe,  sir,  that  the  only  feeling  in 
our  Church  at  large  on  reading  the  Bishop's  letter  will  be 
one  of  sorrow  and  shame.  We  would  not  willingly  see  any 
gentleman  insulted  in  our  name,  and  we  owe  too  much  to  you 
for  all  that  you  have  sent  us  in  your  books,  which  we  know 
here  as  well  as  any  Englishman  can,  to  feel  lightly  the  dis- 
grace of  such  words  as  the  Bishop  of  Vermont  has  written.' 

But  to  return  from  what  is  in  the  nature  of  a  digression 
to  Stanley's  statement  of  his  views  in  Convocation.  In  his 
speeches  on  '  Essays  and  Reviews  '  and  in  defence  of  Bishop 
Colenso  he  had  demanded  toleration  for  the  so-called 


208 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


Rationalists.  He  made  the  same  demand  in  favour  of  the 
Ritualists,  although  his  personal  sympathies  were  not  en- 
listed on  their  side,  and  although  such  an  appeal  was,  as  he 
frankly  admitted,  the  severest  trial  to  which  his  principles 
of  toleration  could  be  put. 

Since  i860  the  Ritual  movement  had  been  rapidly  grow- 
ing in  importance,  although  public  attention  had  been  di- 
verted from  it  by  the  stormy  controversies  which  centred 
round  '  Essays  and  R*eviews  '  and  Bishop  Colenso.  On 
February  8th,  1866,  the  question  was  brought  before  Con- 
vocation, and  a  Committee  of  the  Lower  House  was  ap- 
pointed to  consider  and  report  upon  fit  'measures  for 
clearing  the  doubts  and  allaying  the  anxieties '  which  had 
been  expressed.  Stanley  insisted  upon  the  two  great  evils 
to  which  Ritualism,  in  his  opinion,  led  —  the  defiance  of 
the  wishes  of  congregations,  and  the  defiance  of  the  au- 
thority of  bishops.  But  he  described  the  practices  them- 
selves, in  the  language  of  Calvin,  as  '  tolerabiles  ineptice.' 
'  Let  us  first,'  he  said, 

'take  the  first  word,  "tolerabiles''  —  that  is,  they  ought  to  be 
tolerated.  They  ought  to  be  tolerated,  first,  on  the  general 
grounds  in  regard  to  practices,  which  are  equally  true  as 
regards  opinions  also,  namely  —  that  the  idea  of  a  National 
Church  implies  its  comprehension  or  toleration  of  as  great 
a  diversity  of  practices  and  of  opinions  within  its  pale  as  is 
compatible  with  practical  unity.  Of  course  there  is  that 
limit,  the  limit  of  practical  (not  uniformity,  but)  unity. 
But  within  that  limit  a  National  Church  ought  to  contain 
the  largest  breadth,  both  of  practice  and  opinion,  that  can 
be  included.  .  .  . 

'  Two  nations  or  parties  (as  it  was  said  a  long  time  ago) 
were  struggling  in  the  womb  of  the  Church  of  England, 
each  one  from  time  to  time  attempting  to  cast  out  the 
other.  Neither  has  ever  entirely  succeeded,  and  I  trust 
never  will  succeed  to  the  end  of  time.  That  is  one  reason 
why  these  practices,  if  it  is  possible  without  rending  asunder 
the  practical  unity  of  the  Church,  ought  to  be  tolerated. 
Another  reason  why  we  should  leave  them  without  further 


CHAP.  XXI 


SPEECH  OJV  RITUALISM 


notice  is  that  .  .  .  (except  in  the  two  aspects  to  which  I  have 
alluded  —  their  defiance  of  the  people  and  the  bishops)  they 
are  innocent ;  that  is,  they  have  no  malignant  object.  Many 
may  think  these  practices  foolish,  but  their  greatest  enemy 
will  not  say  they  have  any  object  beyond  that  of  aiding  the 
devotions  of  the  people,  or  of  assimilating  our  services  to 
the  Churches  of  other  communions.  But  those  objects  are 
not  sinful ;  they  do  not  tend  to  the  engendering  of  evil 
passions  ;  they  are  not  of  the  nature  of  many  of  those 
pursuits  in  which  so  many  of  the  clergy  during  the  last 
few  years  have  been  engaged  —  attacking  and  excluding 
one  excellent  person  after  another,  and  promoting  ill-will 
and  misunderstanding  between  man  and  man.  They  only 
assume  that  character  when  adopted  in  antagonism  to  the 
bishops  or  the  parishes.  In  themselves  they  are  innocent 
—  even  their  enemies  being  judges  —  and  this  is  a  sound 
reason  why  they  should  be  permitted,  if  it  can  be  done 
without  the  disruption  of  particular  parishes,  or  disturbing 
the  unity  of  the  whole  Church.' 

'  I  now  come,'  he  goes  on  to  say, 

'  to  the  second  word  which  Calvin  used,  "  inepticB."  If  you 
look  out  the  word  in  the  Facciolati  Lexicon,  you  will 
find  many  explanations  given  for  it;  some  I  do  not  deny 
are  sufficiently  offensive ;  but  amongst  them  I  will  take 
two  —  "unfit  or  unsuitable,"  and  "trifling."  They  are 
"  unsuitable  "  under  the  aspect  in  which  we  now  consider 
them  —  namely,  they  do  not  express  the  particular  doctrines 
which  their  friends  and  enemies  connect  with  them  ;  and 
they  are  "trifling,"  comparatively  with  the  greater  matters 
of  justice,  truth,  and  mercy,  of  which  I  have  already  spoken. 
People  often  think,  and  some  (perhaps  many)  in  this  room 
think,  that,  although  trifling  in  themselves,  they  are  not 
trifling  in  respect  to  the  tremendous  doctrines  they  sym- 
bolise. 

'  It  is  said  that  they  symbolise  important  doctrines, 
which  accounts  for  the  great  fight  made  for  them  ;  but  that 
also  accounts  for  the  great  fight  made  against  them.  It  is 
my  wish  to  show  that  there  is  no  reason  for  the  fight,  either 
for  them  or  against  them.  If  we  take  the  chief  point  in 
dispute,  the  "vestments,"  it  is  important  once  for  all  to 


'  Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  February  9th,  1866,  pp.  174-6. 
VOL.  II  P 


2IO 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


remember  what  is  their  origin,  and  what  doctrines  or 
things  they  do  or  do  not  symbolise.  An  explanation  has 
been  given  of  their  origin  —  that  they  have  grown  out  of 
the  garments  worn  by  the  Apostles.  But  what  were  the 
garments  of  the  Apostles,  except  just  the  common  dress 
worn  by  the  country-people  at  that  time  These  vest- 
ments, which  have  made  so  much  noise,  altered,  of  course, 
in  the  ages  which  have  since  elapsed,  were  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  shirt,  the  coat,  and  the  overcoat  of  the 
Greek  or  Roman  peasants  of  the  time.  When  the  tunicle, 
the  alb,  and  the  chasuble  are  adopted  as  an  imitation  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  custom,  that  is  another  matter ;  but 
this  is  not  the  ground  taken  up. 

'  What  was  their  true  historical  origin  is  the  question. 
It  was  that  the  clerical  order  naturally  retained  these  old 
vestments,  which  originated  in  the  time  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  This  was  partly  by  chance  and  partly  because 
the  clerical  order  is  naturally  averse  to  changes.  For 
instance,  bishops'  wigs,  which  are  not  in  themselves  sym- 
bolical of  anything,  were  worn  simply  because  the  bishops 
retained  them  after  other  persons  left  them  off.  So  it  was 
respecting  these  ecclesiastical  vestments  :  they  were  all 
originally  ordinary  garments.  What  is  the  tunicle  or  the 
alb .''  It  is  simply  a  white  shirt.  What  is  the  mysterious 
chasuble It  is  perfectly  well  known  that  it  is  the  slang 
name  by  which  a  Roman  peasant  called  the  long  smock- 
frock  which  he  drew  over  his  coat  on  a  rainy  day,  and 
which  encased  him  as  in  a  "  little  house  "  —  "  casula  "  —  just 
as,  by  the  same  metaphor,  a  hat  with  us  is  called  a  "  tile." 
What  is  the  dalmatic  It  was  a  new  fashion  of  the  over- 
coat introduced  by  two  Roman  emperors  whose  characters 
do  not  commend  them  to  us  for  imitation  —  Commodus 
and  Heliogabalus  —  and  was  afterwards  adopted  by  sov- 
ereigns everywhere.  Richard  II.,  in  his  portrait  at  the 
end  of  this  room,^*^  is  represented  as  wearing  the  dalmatic, 
and  what  it  symbolises  in  his  case  it  is  difficult  to  say.  .  .  . ' 

He  thus  concludes  : 

'  This,  then,  is  what  I  have  to  say  on  the  matter  —  that 
these  parties  ought  to  be  tolerated  on  the  general  principles 

20  The  portrait  of  Richard  II.,  now  on  the  south  side  of  the  Sacrarium  in 
the  Abbey,  was  at  that  time  hanging  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber. 

'^1  Chronicle  of  Cotivocation,  Lower  House,  February  9th,  1866,  pp.  176-7. 


CHAP.  XXI  SPEECH  ON  RITUALISM 


211 


by  which  the  Church  of  England  tolerates  all  that  it  can 
include  within  its  pale  ;  they  ought  to  be  tolerated  because 
they  are  innocent ;  they  ought  to  be  let  alone  because  they 
are  "inapt,"  unsuitable  to  express  any  principle  for  or 
against  which  any  one  is  contending.  Things  which 
quicken  one  man's  devotion  do  not  affect  another.  With 
one  it  is  Gothic,  and  with  another  Grecian,  architecture. 
With  some  it  is  dresses  like  these,  with  some  a  white 
surplice,  with  others  no  surplice  at  all.  All  these  things 
ought  to  be  tolerated  as  so  many  helps  to  the  devotion  of 
the  Church,  according  to  the  different  ways  in  which  they 
strike  different  minds.  The  only  serious  dangers  are  those 
to  which  I  have  before  alluded,  where  they  spread  in 
defiance  of  the  parish  or  the  constituted  authorities,  or 
where  they  are  exalted  as  if  they  made  part  of  the  essence 
of  religion.  When  St.  Remigius  came  to  Clovis,  the  King 
of  the  Franks,  to  preach  Christianity  to  him,  he  appeared 
with  the  utmost  pomp  he  could  command  ;  upon  which  the 
barbarian  chief,  greatly  struck  by  the  spectacle,  exclaimed, 
"Do  I  behold  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.?"  "No,"  replied 
the  saint,  "you  only  see  one  step  towards  it!"  That  is 
the  true  state  of  the  case  in  all  these  things.  It  may  be  a 
good  step,  or  a  bad  step,  but  it  is  not  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
itself  ;  and  it  is  a  great  misfortune  when  those  who  defend 
these  practices  reverse  the  sentence  of  St.  Remigius,  and 
represent  these  practices  to  be  the  Kingdom  of  God  itself. 
I  have  already  expressed  my  hope  and  belief  that  this  con- 
fusion between  the  externals  and  the  essentials  of  religion  is 
shared  by  few.  On  those  who  do  not  share  it,  but  who  do 
place  these  things  in  their  true  relative  position,  the  argu- 
ments used  here  or  elsewhere  will  doubtless  have  their  due 
weight.  If  there  be  any  who  think,  on  the  one  side,  that  it 
is  absolutely  vital  to  obey  the  rubric  about  vestments,  or,  on 
the  other  side,  to  obey  the  rubric  about  placing  the  com- 
munion-table in  the  body  of  the  church,  my  only  hope  is 
that  such  persons  must  be  very  few.'22 

It  was  in  tliis  same  spirit  that  Stanley  welcomed  the 
Bennett  Judgment,  in  1872.  The  Vicar  of  Frome  Selwood 
was  prosecuted  for  various  statements  respecting  '  the  Real 
Objective  Presence  in  the  Eucharist '  by  an  Evangelical 

^  Ibid.  pp.  1 78-79. 


212 


LIFE  OF  DEAN'  STANLEY 


1874 


association  formed  for  the  purpose  of  suppressing  such 
opinions.  The  case  came  before  the  Privy  Council,  where 
it  was  viewed,  as  Stanley  says  in  his  article  in  the  '  Edin- 
burgh Review,'  '  not  in  the  heated  atmosphere  of  partisan 
theologians,  but  by  the  dry  daylight  of  English  law.' 
Judgment  acquitting  Mr.  Bennett  was  pronounced  on 
June  8th,  1872. 

'Again  and  again  in  the  course  of  the  decision  the 
toleration  of  the  Lutheran  or  Roman  doctrine  of  the 
Eucharist  is  based  on  the  maxims  laid  down  for  the  tolera- 
tion of  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  Baptism,  of  the  free 
critical  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  and  of  the  Origenist 
doctrine  of  Future  Punishment.  It  is  the  last  and  crowning 
triumph  of  the  Christian  latitudinarianism  of  the  Church  of 
England.' 

Nor  is  any  inconsistency  with  these  principles  involved 
in  his  support  of  the  Public  Worship  Regulation  Act  of 
1874,  which  was  intended  to  restrain  the  ceremonial  ex- 
cesses or  shortcomings  of  the  clergy.  He  had  always 
maintained  that  the  limits  of  toleration  were  passed  when 
the  authority  of  Bishops  or  the  wishes  of  congregations 
were  defied.  He  therefore  defended  the  Bill  before  the 
Lower  House  of  Convocation  on  April  30th,  1874.  He 
ridiculed  the  idea  that,  if  the  Bill  passed, 

'there  would  be  an  immense  secession,  that  the  Church 
would  be  overthrown,  that  disestablishment  and  disruption 
would  take  place.  Such  expressions  as  these  are  constantly 
used  by  every  single  person  who  feels  himself  aggrieved  in 
any  way  whatever,  and  this  fact,  as  I  said  before,  cannot 
but  tend  to  diminish  their  effect.' 

He  insisted  on  the  insignificance  of  the  points  in  which 

discipline  would  probably  be  enforced.    '  I  presume,'  he 

said, 

'  that  what,  to  the  minds  of  many  of  the  clergy,  appears 
most  likely  to  be  interfered  with  under  this  Bill  is  their 

2*  'The  Bennett  Judgment'  {^Edinburgh  Review,  July  1872). 


CHAP.  XXI 


SPEECH  ON  RITUALISM 


213 


preconceived  opinion  as  to  the  position  in  which  a  clergy- 
man should  stand  in  regard  to  the  Communion-table.  I 
must  be  permitted  to  ask,  with  some  astonishment  and 
pain,  whether  it  is  possible  that  any  large  number  of  the 
clergy  can  believe  either  in  the  lawfulness,  or  the  wisdom, 
or,  I  will  add,  the  success  of  establishing  a  new  Church, 
possibly  with  the  help  of  some  ex-colonial  Bishop,  on 
the  basis  of  the  fundamental  dogma  of  insisting  on  the 
essential  and  indispensable  necessity  of  a  clergyman's 
standing  a  few  feet  to  the  right  or  the  left,  on  one  side  or 
the  other,  of  the  Communion-table  —  a  position  which,  even 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  which  it  is  the  special  object 
of  most  of  these  persons  to  imitate  — '  (Loud  cries  of  'No, 
no').  'At  any  rate,  it  is  held  up  as  a  very  great  authority 
in  reference  to  such  matters.'    (Renewed  cries  of  '  No.') 

'  At  all  events,  the  position  of  the  clergyman  is,  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  regarded  with  such  absolute  in- 
difference that  the  chief  pastor  of  that  Church,  when  he 
celebrates  the  Communion,  always  stands  in  exactly  the 
opposite  direction,  not  with  his  back,  but  with  his  face  to 
the  people,  no  doubt  following  the  primitive  usage.  And 
in  the  most  famous  representation  of  that  sacred  ordinance 
that  has  ever  been  made  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  of 
the  West,  which  has  been  the  foundation  of  all  the  most 
solemn  festivals  ever  instituted  in  the  Christian  world  with 
a  view  of  doing  honour  to  the  Holy  Sacrament  of  the 
Lord's  Supper,  the  priest  is  represented,  not  in  the  attitude 
which  is  eagerly  claimed  by  those  clergy  of  our  Church  as 
indispensable,  but  in  that  attitude  and  posture  which  are 
regarded  by  them  as  so  detestable  that,  rather  than  adopt 
it,  they  declare  that  they  will  form  themselves  into  a  new 
Church.  I  allude,  of  course,  to  Raphael's  picture  of  the 
Miracle  of  Bolsina,  which  is  the  foundation  of  the  great 
Roman  Catholic  festival  of  Corpus  Christi,  where  the 
priest  is  at  the  north  end  of  the  table,  just  in  the  very 
attitude  of  an  ordinary  Protestant  clergyman. 

'  On  such  a  point,  even  on  their  own  principles,  there  is 
nothing  to  justify  anyone  in  seeking  to  form  a  new  Church 
from  the  fact  of  a  Bill  having  been  passed  to  prevent  such 
feuds  as  have  hitherto  arisen  from  the  opposite  opinions 
which  have  existed  on  a  matter  of  such  infinite  insignifi- 
cance. And  then,  therefore,  it  is  proposed,  and  I  think 
very  properly,  to  make  the  Bishop  absolute  judge  as  to 


214 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


whether,  in  case  of  any  complaint  being  made,  it  is  desir- 
able that  it  should  be  brought  before  the  Court  that  is  to 
be  appointed  for  the  trial  of  any  question.  He  must  judge 
whether  it  be  a  complaint  worthy  of  consideration,  or 
whether  it  be  one  of  those  frivolous  cases  where  both 
parties  are  equally  to  blame  and  equally  to  be  repressed.' 

Finally,  he  repudiated  the  theory  that  Convocation  could, 
by  any  resolution  of  its  own,  remedy  the  evils  for  which 
legislation  was  invited.  The  tendency  to  treat  the  decrees 
of  Convocation  as  having  any  binding  force  on  the  con- 
sciences of  the  clergy  was,  in  his  opinion,  a  deadly  mis- 
chief. In  a  letter  to  a  friend  written  in  1874  he  had  said, 
'  the  only  cure  for  Ritualism  is  the  destruction  of  Convoca- 
tion —  Delenda  est  Convocatio.  Never  was  a  more  disas- 
trous step  of  false  policy  than  the  revival  of  such  a  body  in 
direct  defiance  of  Burke's  warning  true  to  the  letter.'  In 
this  spirit  his  concluding  remarks  were  framed  : 

'  The  other  general  remark  that  I  would  make  before  I 
sit  down  is  this.  A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  the 
necessity,  or  desirableness,  of  remedying  these  evils,  not  by 
legislation,  but  by  the  action  of  this  House.  I  do  not  now 
speak  of  the  impossibility  of  enforcing  the  decisions  of  this 
House  legally  except  by  legislation.  I  should  have  thought 
that  to  anyone  who  was  acquainted  merely  with  the 
elements  of  the  English  Constitution,  it  must  be  perfectly 
obvious  that  no  resolution  passed  by  this  House  could  have 
the  binding  force  of  law  upon  an  English  citizen  unless  it 
had  received  the  sanction  of  the  Imperial  Legislature. 

But  I  do  not  speak  of  that  difficulty  or  that  impossi- 
bility. It  is  not  of  the  impossibility,  but  of  the  wrong 
which  is  attempted  to  be  done  by  language  of  this  kind, 
that  I  would  speak.  I  speak  of  the  rights  which  I  claim, 
as  an  English  clergyman  and  an  English  citizen,  of  acknow- 
ledging no  law  for  my  guidance  except  the  law  of  this 
realm  and  of  this  land.  I  do  not  acknowledge,  and  I  do 
not  think  the  clergy  outside  this  House  will  acknowledge, 
any  resolution  passed  by  this  House  as  binding  upon 
men,  either  in  ministerial  or  in  civic  capacities ;  and  I  am 
the  more  anxious  to  say  this  because  there  is  no  person 


CHAP.  XXI 


SPEECH  ON  RITUALISM 


215 


in  this  House  who  is  more  eager  on  all  occasions  to  conform 
to  what  I  have  the  best  reasons  for  knowing  to  be  the  law 
of  this  country,  and  therefore  the  law  of  this  Church,  than 
•I  am.  If  there  are  any  members  of  this  House  who  think 
that  on  any  occasion  there  can  be  any  rule  or  law  to  which 
I  think  myself  bound,  or  by  which  I  think  other  persons 
ought  to  feel  bound,  than  the  law  of  England,  or  that  I  do 
not  gladly  obey  or  enforce  the  State  law,  they  are  greatly 
mistaken. 

'And  it  is  for  that  reason  that  I  do  deprecate  most 
strongly,  and  have  deprecated  often  before,  the  tone  which 
runs  through  all  these  debates  of  endeavouring  to  set  up 
the  decrees  and  the  resolutions  of  this  House,  either  in 
temporal  or  spiritual  matters,  as  having  the  binding  force  of, 
or  as  in  any  sense  superior  to,  the  acts  of  the  Imperial 
Legislature.  I  was  shocked  and  surprised  the  other  day, 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  to  hear  a  right  rev.  prelate  whom 
I  greatly  respect  distinguish  between  his  position  as  a 
peer  of  Parliament  and  his  position  as  a  Father  in  God, 
speaking  as  if  he  were  only  a  peer  of  Parliament  when 
Parliament  was  sitting,  and  only  a  Father  in  God  when 
sitting  in  the  Upper  House  of  Convocation.  I  entirely  re- 
pudiate any  such  distinction.  I  regard  the  Bishops  of 
this  realm  as  much  more  Fathers  in  God  when  they  are 
sitting  in  the  supreme  council  of  the  nation,  addressing 
the  peers  of  England,  than  when  they  are  talking  to  half  a 
dozen  reporters  in  a  private  drawing-room  in  Dean's  Yard. 
It  is  most  desirable,  at  all  events,  that  if  there  be  anybody 
in  this  House  who  values  the  importance  of  maintaining 
the  supremacy  of  law,  and  of  protesting  against  those 
usurpations  to  which  I  have  just  alluded,  they  ought  freely 
and  openly  to  express  their  feelings  on  that  subject,  as  their 
duty  alike  to  the  State  and  the  Church,  alike  to  the  Imperial 
Legislature  and  to  their  brethren  in  this  House.'  ^ 

In  these  Convocation  speeches,  whether  on  the  subject 
of  '  Essays  and  Reviews,'  or  of  Bishop  Colenso,  or  of  Ritual- 
ism, Stanley  was  contending  for  the  preservation  of  that 
enlargement  which  the  National  Church  already  possessed. 
But  he  also  strove  with  equal  vigour  to  widen  its  borders, 
and  'to  unite  in  one  fellowship  of  good  works  '  those  who 

The  Guardian^  May  6,  1S74,  pp.  558-559. 


2l6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


stood  without  the  pale  of  its  communion.  Two  illustrations 
must  suffice,  and  these  are  taken  from  his  speeches  on 
the  revision  of  the  Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible  and  on 
the  Athanasian  Creed. 

On  February  loth,  1870,  a  Committee  of  Convocation 
on  the  Revision  of  the  Authorised  Version  was  appointed 
by  Convocation.  Of  this  Committee  Stanley  was  a  member. 
It  met  on  March  24th  to  draw  up  resolutions,  which  were 
to  guide  the  selection  and  the  proceedings  of  the  Re- 
visionists. Amongst  these  resolutions,  the  fifth,  and  last, 
ran  in  the  following  terms  : 

'  That  it  is  desirable  that  Convocation  should  nominate 
a  body  of  its  own  members  to  undertake  the  revision,  who 
shall  be  at  liberty  to  invite  the  co-operation  of  any  persons 
eminent  for  scholarship,  to  whatever  nation  or  religious 
body  they  belong.' 

Under  these  resolutions  a  Committee,  or  'Company,' 
was  appointed  by  Convocation  to  revise  the  Authorised 
Version  of  the  New  Testament.  The  Revisers  met  for  the 
first  time  on  Wednesday,  June  22,  1870.  The  inaugural 
meeting  was  preceded  by  a  celebration  of  the  Holy  Com- 
munion in  Henry  the  Seventh's  Chapel  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  and  almost  all  the  Revisers,  including  several  Scotch 
Presbyterians  and  English  Nonconformists,  were  present. 
Among  them  was  Dr.  Vance  Smith,  the  Unitarian  minister 
of  St.  Saviour  Gate  Chapel,  in  York.  The  whole  Company 
of  Revisers  had  been  invited  to  partake  together  of  the 
Holy  Communion  by  Stanley  in  the  following  circular : 

'  Deanery,  Westminster:  June  i8th,  1870. 

'  It  having  been  suggested  that  the  Company  of  Revisers 
of  the  Authorised  Version  of  the  New  Testament  might 
be  desirous  of  partaking  together  of  the  Holy  Communion 
before  entering  on  their  work,  the  Dean  of  Westminster  has 
consented  to  administer  the  Holy  Communion  to  such  of 
the  Company  as  shall  be  disposed  to  attend  in  the  Chapel 


CHAP.  XXI 


DR.   VANCE  SMITH 


217 


of  Henry  VII.,  in  Westminster  Abbey,  at  11.30  a.m.  on 
Wednesday,  June  22.' 

The  Communion  of  June  22nd  was  vehemently  de- 
nounced, by  the  religious  press  and  by  the  Church  Union,  as 
'  a  deliberate  embodiment  of  insult  and  defiance  to  the  whole 
of  Catholic  Christendom,'  as  'an  act  of  desecration,'  and 
as  the  blasphemous  act  of  'a  dignitary  of  the  Church,'  who 
*  has  cast  pearls  before  swine,  and  given  that  which  is  most 
holy  to  the  dogs,'  as  'a  gross  profanation  of  the  Sacrament,' 
'  a  horrible  sacrilege,'  '  a  dishonour  to  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
of  the  gravest  and  most  emphatic  character.'  The  excite- 
ment grew  to  a  white  heat ;  protests  and  remonstrances 
poured  in  upon  the  Primate,  and  in  Archbishop  Tait's 
absence  a  resolution  was  moved  and  carried  in  the  Upper 
House  of  Convocation  to  the  following  effect : 

'That  it  is  the  judgment  of  this  House  that  no  person 
who  denies  the  Godhead  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  ought 
to  be  invited  to  join  either  Company  to  which  is  committed 
the  revision  of  the  Authorised  Version  of  Holy  Scripture ; 
and  that  it  is  further  the  j  udgment  of  this  House  that  any  such 
person  now  on  either  Company  should  cease  to  act  therewith. ' 

This  resolution  was  communicated  to  the  Lower  House 
for  adoption  on  February  i6th,  1871.  Stanley  at  once 
moved  the  previous  question,  on  three  grounds  : 

'  (i)  That  the  resolution  involves  on  its  very  face  a  breach 
of  good  faith,  a  scandalous  inconsistency  and  vacillation  on 
the  part  of  this  venerable  House  of  Convocation,  which 
Convocation  ought  not  for  a  moment  to  entertain  ;  (2)  It 
involves  by  implication  a  new  principle  in  the  translation 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  and  one  which  scholars  in  all  such 
matters  ought  entirely  to  repudiate ;  (3)  The  resolution,  as 
worded,  is  intrinsically  absurd  and  impracticable.'  '^^ 

He  showed,  on  the  first  point,  that  the  fifth  resolution 
of  Convocation,  under  which  the  Company  of  Revisers  had 
been  appointed, 

^  Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  February  i6th,  1871,  p.  170. 


2l8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


'  was  adopted  in  the  Committee  with  a  view  of  covering  the 
widest  possible  area  from  which  scholars  might  be  selected 
for  this  work.  It  was  felt  that  this  work  could  only  be 
satisfactorily  conducted,  either  to  themselves  or  the  public, 
by  the  selection  of  persons  whose  only  qualification  should 
be  their  scholarship,  without  regard  to  the  religious 
opinions  they  entertained  or  the  religious  bodies  to  which 
they  belonged.  Not  only  was  this  resolution  almost 
unanimously  adopted  by  the  Committee  of  Revision,  but  it 
was  adopted  after  a  discussion  of  all  the  points  now  at 
issue  —  that  is  to  say,  the  possibility  of  admitting  Unitarians, 
and  also  the  more  extreme  case  of  Jews  —  for  the  Jews,  or  at 
least  many  Jews,  deny  the  Divine  mission  of  our  Lord 
altogether,  while  the  Unitarians,  like  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
and  John  Milton,  only  differ  from  us  in  taking  a  lower 
view  of  His  Divine  character  and  Divine  nature.  It  was 
on  this  point  that  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester  made  a  slight 
objection,  which  was  overruled.  The  Bishop  of  Winchester 
drew  up  this  very  fifth  resolution  with  his  own  hand,  and 
in  it  were  the  words,  "  to  whatever  nation  or  religious 
communion  they  may  belong."  It  was  I  who  suggested 
that  the  word  "  communion  "  should  be  changed  to  "  body," 
so  as  to  include  Jews  as  well  as  Unitarians,  and  with  that 
alteration  it  was  adopted  by  the  Committee  of  Revision. 

'  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  pursue  further  the  manner 
in  which  Convocation  is  pledged  doubly,  trebly,  and  with 
its  eyes  open,  at  every  stage,  to  stand  by  this  fifth  resolution, 
on  the  faith  of  which  the  Companies  have  met  week  after 
week  for  a  long  time  past  at  their  important  work.  No- 
thing could  have  been  more  satisfactory  than  our  unity,  the 
ease  of  our  communications,  and  our  mutual  harmony, 
which  has  never  for  one  moment  been  interrupted  by  any 
theological  difference  whatever.  The  accommodations  of 
the  Companies  have  been  furnished  on  the  faith  of  this 
resolution,  and  would  certainly  not  have  been  given  except 
on  that  faith.  They  have  been  living,  travelling,  feeding 
on  that  pledge  ;  for  the  funds  which  have  been  raised  were 
contributed  by  the  public  mainly  on  the  faith  of  this  resolu- 
tion, and  in  large  part  from  the  purses  of  those  against 
whom  the  resolution  sent  down  from  the  Upper  House  is 
directed.  I  ask,  then,  is  it  possible  to  imagine  a  case  in 
which  there  could  be  a  greater  breach  of  good  faith  than 
the  rescinding  of  the  fifth  resolution  ? ' 


Hid.  pp.  171-4. 


CHAP.  XXI 


DR.   VANCE  SMITH 


219 


Coming  to  his  second  point,  he  said  : 

'  If  there  be  anything  which  is  important  in  translating 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  it  is  that  the  persons  concerned  in  it 
should  not  be  supposed  to  be  actuated  by  theological 
partialities  or  antipathies  of  their  own  ;  yet  here  is  a  reso- 
lution intended  to  exclude  certain  persons  who  are  sup- 
posed to  have  certain  theological  views  —  that  is,  in  other 
words,  it  is  intended  that  others  who  have  other  opinions 
ought  to  accommodate  the  translation  to  opinions  of  their 
own.  Without  the  presence  of  a  countervailing  opinion, 
without  the  power  of  consulting  what  are  the  grounds  or 
reasons  on  which  other  views  of  the  meaning  of  the  sacred 
text  can  be  founded,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  we  can 
arrive  at  fair  and  accurate  conclusions  on  the  translation  of 
difficult  passages.'  ^' 

The  third  ground  on  which  he  moved  the  previous 
question  was,  that  'the  meaning  of  the  House  was  so 
ignorantly  and  inadequately  expressed  that  it  will  exclude 
members  whom  it  is  not  intended  to  exclude,  or  else  include 
the  very  persons  whom  it  is  intended  to  exclude.'  He 
ended  with  an  indignant  repudiation  of  the  arguments  by 
which  it  was  sought  to  justify  an  admitted  breach  of  faith. 
'  It  is  put  forward,  I  am  grieved  to  see,  in  the  Upper  House,' 
he  says, 

'that  while  the  resolution  is  fully  acknowledged  to  be  a 
breach  of  good  faith,  it  is  nevertheless  desirable  that  this 
breach  of  good  faith  should  be  made  for  the  honour  of  — 
of  whom.''  —  the  honour  of  the  All-wise,  the  7\ll-holy,  the 
All-true,  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  Alas  !  and 
has  it  come  to  this }  that  our  boasted  orthodoxy  has 
landed  us  in  this  hideous  heresy !  Is  it  possible  that  it 
should  be  supposed  that  we  can  consent  for  a  moment  to 
degrade  the  Divine  attributes  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  to 
the  level  of  a  mere  capricious  heathen  divinity  Can  we 
believe  that  anything  but  dishonour  can  be  conferred  on 
Him  by  making  His  name  a  pretext  for  inconsistency,  for 
vacillation,  for  a  breach  of  faith  between  two  contracting 
parties I  have  read  in  that  Sacred  Book,  the  meaning  of 

27  Ibid.  p.  174. 


220 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1871 


which  it  was  the  object  of  this  revision  to  bring  out  more 
clearly  for  the  people  of  England  —  I  have  read  in  that 
Sacred  Book  that  one  of  the  characteristics  of  those  who 
dwell  on  God's  holy  hill  is,  "  Whoso  sweareth  to  his  neigh- 
bour and  disappointeth  him  not,  though  it  were  to  his  own 
hindrance."  I  have  also  found  that  in  the  other  part  of 
the  Sacred  Book  it  is  declared,  "  Not  everyone  that  saith 
Lord,  Lord,  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  My  Father  "  —  and 
we  know  that  the  will  of  the  Father  is  judgment,  justice, 
and  truth  —  "shall  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  I 
for  one  lift  up  my  voice  against  any  such  detestable 
doctrine  as  that  our  Lord  and  Saviour  can  be  honoured  in 
any  way  but  by  a  strict  adherence  to  the  laws  of  honour, 
integrity,  and  truth.  I  repudiate  the  notion  that  any  dis- 
honour can  be  brought  on  His  sacred  Name  by  that  which, 
from  every  recorded  word  and  every  act  of  His  sacred 
life,  we  must  be  certain  He  would  have  entirely  ap- 
proved.' 

The  result  of  a  long  and  heated  debate  was  that  the 
Lower  House  refused  to  endorse  the  resolution  of  the 
bishops,  and  contented  itself  with  an  expression  of  regret 
at  the  offence  caused  by  the  fact  that  a  member  of  one  of 
the  Companies  of  Revision  '  who  denies,  and  has  publicly 
declared  his  rejection  of,  the  Creed  commonly  called  the 
Nicene,'  should  have  received  the  Holy  Communion. 

The  whole  controversy  was  one  in  which  the  contend- 
ing parties  never  stood  on  common  ground.  The  line  of 
reasoning  by  which  the  administration  of  the  Sacrament 
to  an  alleged  Unitarian  was  condemned  as  sacrilegious, 
was  one  that  had  no  weight  with  Stanley,  and  that  Dr. 
Vance  Smith  could  not  be  expected  to  appreciate.  Hence 
it  was  that  Stanley  made  no  answer  to  his  critics,  and  Dr. 
Vance  Smith  was  surprised  at  the  outcry.  To  Stanley, 
the  inauguration  of  so  solemn  an  undertaking  as  the 
Revision  of  the  Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible  with  a 
Celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion,  and  the  invitation 


Ibid.  pp.  177-8. 


CHAP.  XXI 


DR.   VANCE  SMITH 


221 


of  all  who  were  chosen  for  such  a  responsible  office,  seemed 
to  be  at  once  his  sacred  duty  and  his  high  privilege.  '  It 
is  quite  true,'  he  wrote  privately  to  a  friend  who  asked 
for  confirmation  of  the  alleged  facts, 

'  that,  in  conformity  with  a  resolution  of  Convocation, 
eminent  Nonconformist  scholars  were  invited  to  join  in 
the  work  of  revising  the  Authorised  Version,  and  that  one 
of  these  was  a  person  holding  the  opinions  (whether  of 
Laelius  Socinus  and  P'austus  Socinus  I  do  not  know,  for 
I  have  not  read  their  writings,  but)  of  Milton  and  of  Sir 
Isaac  Newton. 

'  It  is  also  quite  true  that  a  notice  was  sent  to  all  the 
persons  engaged  in  the  work  of  revision  that  the  Holy 
Communion  would  be  administered  to  such  as  were 
disposed  to  attend,  and  amongst  those  who  did  so  attend 
there  was  one,  at  least,  who  was  supposed  to  hold  the 
opinions  to  which  I  have  referred.  Possibly  there  may 
have  been  others.  It  was  with  very  great  thankfulness 
that  I  was  able  to  be  the  means  of  gathering  together 
in  remembrance  of  our  common  Lord  these  various 
persons,  being  convinced  that  in  so  doing  I  was  obeying 
His  command  to  His  disciples,  that  they  should  love  one 
another,  and  following  His  example  by  joining  in  the 
same  good  work,  and  in  the  same  Holy  Communion,  with 
persons  of  the  most  various  opinions.' 

So  also,  on  the  other  hand,  the  spirit  in  which  the 
Holy  Communion  was  received  by  Dr.  Vance  Smith  was 
earnest  and  devout.  *  I  went  to  the  service,'  he  wrote  in 
1887, 

'in  a  perfectly  earnest  and  devout  spirit,  desiring  to  join, 
so  far  as  I  could,  in  that  particular  mode  of  celebrating  a 
Christian  rite  which  I  highly  value,  and  glad  of  the 
opportunity  of  confessing  myself  a  Christian  disciple,  in 
communion,  at  least  for  that  occasion,  with  so  many  to 
whom  I  looked  with  sentiments  of  the  greatest  respect  and 
esteem.  T  had  at  first,  I  confess,  some  hesitation  in  eoing. 
My  difficulty,  however,  was  all  on  my  own  side.  I  did  not 
dream  that  others  would  object  to  my  presence,  which,  of 
course,  they  had  no  kind  of  right  to  do.  I  overcame  my 
own  hesitation  mainly  in  consequence  of  the  intervention 


222 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


of  Dean  Stanley.  I  had  letters  and  a  telegram  from  him 
on  the  subject,  and  the  result  was  that  I  determined  to 
put  away  my  scruples,  and  for  that  occasion  to  "conform" 
so  far  as  I  could. 

'To  me  the  service  was,  and  is,  a  simple  commemora- 
tion of  the  self-sacrifice  and  the  death  of  our  common 
Lord  and  Master,  and  I  did  not  apprehend  that  anyone 
would  object  to  my  presence,  whatever  my  own  personal 
difficulty  might  be.  I  was  amazed  at  the  outburst — of 
what  shall  I  term  it.?  —  which  immediately  followed,  very 
much  as  if  I  had  been  a  heathen,  or  an  unbelieving  Jew,  or 
had  gone  to  scoff ! ' 

The  last,  and  in  some  respects  the  most  embittered,  of 
the  many  controversies  that  occupied  Stanley  in  Convoca- 
tion during  the  years  1864-72  arose  upon  the  Athanasian 
Creed.  Respect  for  rubrical  commands,  which  was  a 
feature  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  revived  the  use  of  a 
Creed  which  a  previous  generation  had  seldom  read.  The 
more  frequent  repetition  of  the  '  damnatory  clauses '  stimu- 
lated a  growing  sense  of  uneasiness  and  an  increasing 
desire  for  relief.  Educated  and  earnest  men  were  startled 
at  its  unfamiliar  words,  and  intending  candidates  for  Holy 
Orders  found  in  its  language  an  insurmountable  obstacle. 
The  Ritual  Commission,  of  which  Stanley  was  a  member, 
dealt  with  the  subject  in  their  Fourth  Report,  which  was 
published  in  September  1870.  Among  the  suggestions 
that  were  before  them  to  re-translate,  shorten,  omit,  or 
explain  the  Creed,  the  majority  of  the  Commissioners 
decided  to  recommend  the  last.  They  proposed  that  the 
Creed  should  retain  its  present  place  and  form  in  the 
Public  Service,  but  that  a  rubric  should  be  added  ex- 
planatory of  the  sense  in  which  the  condemnations  of  the 
Confession  of  Faith  were  to  be  understood.^^ 

29  Stanley's  reasons,  as  stated  in  the  Report,  for  dissenting  from  the  recom- 
mendations of  his  colleagues  are  given  in  the  Appendix  at  the  end  of  this  chap- 
ter.   See  p.  232. 


CHAP.  XXI  THE  ATHANASIAN  CREED 


223 


The  publication  of  the  report  increased  the  discussion 
of  the  subject.  No  unanimity  prevailed.  Even  those  who 
agreed  in  desiring  an  explanatory  rubric  differed  materially 
as  to  the  terms  of  the  explanation.  Some  desired  to  see 
the  Creed  relegated  to  the  same  place  in  the  Prayer  Book 
which  is  held  by  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.  Others  desired 
that  its  use  should  be  optional,  not  compulsory.  Others 
pleaded  for  delay,  for  re-translation,  and  further  investiga- 
tion of  its  history.  Others  protested,  with  more  or  less 
vehemence,  against  any  attempt  '  to  tamper  with '  the 
Creed,  '  to  mutilate '  it  by  omitting  any  of  its  clauses,  or 
to  '  degrade '  it  by  rendering  its  use  permissive,  or  by  the 
reduction  of  the  number  of  days  on  which  it  is  appointed 
to  be  used,  or,  still  more,  by  its  removal  from  the  Public 
Service  of  the  Church.  Stanley  had  himself  throughout 
advocated  the  '  thoroughgoing  policy  '  of  omitting .  the 
Creed  from  the  services  of  the  Church.  Nothing,  he 
believed,  short  of  such  a  banishment  could  relieve  the  un- 
easiness of  congregations,  though  the  explanation  might 
remove  the  scruples  of  candidates  for  Holy  Orders.  This 
opinion  he  had  maintained  on  the  Ritual  Commission,  and 
in  this  opinion  he  had  the  support  of  Archbishop  Tait. 
But  the  growing  excitement  during  the  year  1871  con- 
vinced the  Archbishop  that  the  more  extreme  course 
would  be  unpalatable  to  a  great  majority  of  Churchmen. 
He  therefore  fell  back  upon  the  proposal  supported  by  the 
majority  of  the  Ritual  Commissioners,  and  in  December 
1 87 1  gave  formal  notice  that  the  expediency  of  adopting 
an  explanatory  rubric  would  be  brought  before  Convoca- 
tion in  the  following  February. 

On  both  sides  the  utmost  excitement  prevailed.  While 
Stanley  vehemently  protested  in  a  private  letter  against 
the  abandonment  of  what  he  regarded  as  the  only  straight- 
forward and  satisfactory  course.  Canon  Liddon  and  Dr. 


224 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


Pusey  threatened  to  retire  from  the  ministry  if  the  Creed 
were  either  *  mutilated' or 'degraded.'  Convocation  thus 
met  in  February  1872  under  circumstances  which  threat- 
ened a  stormy  debate.  Stanley  threw  himself  into  the 
fray  with  all  his  energy.  He  repudiated  the  suggestion  of 
an  explanatory  rubric,  as  'a  miserable  attempt  to  explain 
away  simple  and  emphatic  words.'  'These  damnatory 
clauses,'  he  said, 

'occur  in  the  beginning,  middle,  and  end  of  this  Creed, 
and  they  derive  additional  difficulty  and  force  from  being 
attached  to  these  subtle  and  minute  dogmatic  forms.  And 
here,  between  these  clauses  and  those  dogmatic  forms,  I, 
like  many  others  who  have  spoken,  would  draw  a  great 
distinction.  Those  dogmatic  forms  —  "persons,"  "sub- 
stance," and  the  like  —  although  they  are  open  to  great 
misconception  and  great  misunderstanding  when  recited 
in  public  worship,  yet,  as  even  those  who  dissent  from  the 
Creed  would  acknowledge,  contain  at  the  bottom  of  them 
sacred  Biblical  truths.  And  the  more  we  explore  these 
words  and  get  to  the  original  Biblical  meaning,  which  was 
greatly  expanded  and  unfolded,  sometimes  happily  and 
sometimes  unhappily,  in  these  forms,  the  more  we  shall 
see  that  those  inner  truths  are  instructive  and  of  great 
importance.  But  when  we  come  to  the  clauses  of  which 
I  now  proceed  to  speak  it  is  exactly  the  reverse.  The 
more  you  explore  them,  the  more  difficult  do  you  find  it 
to  arrive  at  anything  whatever  that  is  true  at  the  bottom 
of  them.  .  .  . 

'These  clauses  belong  to  a  state  of  mind  which  prevailed, 
no  doubt,  in  the  seventh,  eighth,  and  ninth  centuries,  and, 
we  must  confess  with  sorrow,  even,  perhaps,  to  one  or  two 
centuries  preceding.  They  belong  to  that  state  of  belief 
which  maintained  that  error  on  these  theological  subjects 
was  the  greatest  of  crimes.  They  belong  to  that  wretched 
system  which  regarded  heresy  as  a  crime  which  the  Church, 
and  the  State,  and  all  the  powers  of  the  earth,  were  bound 
to  extirpate,  in  the  same  way  as  murder,  or  theft,  or  any 
of  the  other  great  moral  and  social  evils  that  pollute  man- 
kind. I  hold  that  this  opinion,  which  is  thus  incorporated 
in  the  damnatory  clauses,  is  absolutely  false '  ('Oh!  oh!' 
and  interruption),  '  and  I  will  venture  to  say,  not  only  is  it 


CHAP.  XXI  THE  ATHANASIAN  CREED 


225 


absolutely  false,  but  it  is  believed  by  every  single  member 
of  this  House  to  be  absolutely  false.' ^ 

Words  mean  what  grammar  makes  them  mean  ;  and 

Stanley  could  not  endure  that  any  meaning  should  be  put 

upon  the  clauses  which  was  either  less  or  more  than  their 

grammatical  construction  implied  and  declared.    '  I  even 

admire  these  clauses,'  he  said, 

'  for  their  magnificent  perspicuity  of  language.  Whoever 
was  the  author,  he  knew  what  he  meant.  He  meant,  as  the 
Emperor  Charlemagne  meant  that  anyone  who  could  not 
accept  those  words  was  everlastingly  lost,  and  should  be 
destroyed  by  sword  and  fire  from  the  face  of  Christendom. 
I  admire  the  Emperor  Charlemagne,  but  I  cannot  admire 
those  who  come  with  these  modern  explanations  to  draw 
out  the  teeth  of  this  old  lion,  who  sits  there  in  his  majesty, 
and  defies  any  explanation  to  take  out  his  fierce  and  savage 
fangs.' 

Stanley's  speech  was  received  with  clamorous  interrup- 
tions. Archdeacon  Denison,  after  vainly  appealing  to  the 
Prolocutor  to  silence  the  audacious  speaker,  left  the 
Jerusalem  Chamber  in  disgust.  Hostile  pamphlets  and 
pulpit  denunciations  were  showered  upon  him.  His  con- 
duct was  branded  by  one  of  his  opponents  as  '  scarcely 
reconcilable  with  the  most  fundamental  principles  of 
morality.'  He  was  warned  that,  if  he  had  conducted  him- 
self in  'the  service  of  an  earthly  sovereign  with  like  pro- 
fligacy,' he  'would  inevitably  have  been  tried  by  court- 
martial  and  shot.'  He,  and  those  who  supported  him,  were 
called  upon  '  to  go  out  instantly  from  the  Church,  of  which 
such  men  proclaim  themselves  disaffected  and  disloyal 
ministers.'  He  was  publicly  taunted  with  the  committal 
of  a  graver  offence  than  '  the  tutor  who  corrupts  his  pupil's 
mind,  or  the  trustee  who  robs  the  widow  and  orphan  of 
their  property.' 

Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  April  24th,  1872,  pp.  352-3. 
Ibid.  p.  359. 

VOL.  II  Q 


226 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


Nor  was  he  assailed  with  words  only.  An  attempt 
was  made  to  erase  his  name  from  the  list  of  University 
Preachers  at  Oxford,  to  which,  after  nine  years'  exclu- 
sion, he  had  been  restored.  The  Board  to  whom  the 
nomination  of  Select  Preachers  was  entrusted  by  the 
University  of  Oxford  consisted  of  the  Vice-Chancellor 
(then  Dr.  Liddell),  the  two  Divinity  Professors,  and  the  two 
Proctors.  Stanley  had  been  nominated  by  the  Board  in 
December  1872,  and  his  name  approved  by  the  Vice- 
Chancellor.  The  nomination  was  not,  however,  complete 
till  it  had  received  the  sanction  of  Convocation,  which 
consists  of  resident  and  non-resident  Masters  of  Arts  of  the 
University  of  Oxford.  On  the  3rd  of  December  notice 
was  given,  in  the  following  letter  to  the  Vice-Chancellor, 
that  Stanley's  name  would  be  opposed  : 

'  Dear  Mr.  Vice-Chancellor,  —  We,  the  undersigned 
members  of  Convocation,  wish  at  the  earliest  moment  to 
announce  to  you  that,  having  heard  that  the  Very  Rev.  the 
Dean  of  Westminster  is  to  be  nominated  as  one  of  the 
Select  Preachers,  we  feel  it  our  duty  to  oppose  that 
nomination  in  Convocation. 

'  We  respectfully  request  that  you  will  fix  a  day  for  the 
Convocation  which  may  be  convenient  for  non-resident 
members. 

'  John  W.  Burgon,  '  Montagu  Burrows, 

'C.   P.   GOLIGHTLY,  'H.   R.  BrAMLEY.' 

'  Edward  C.  Woollcombe, 

Speaking  for  himself,  the  Rev.  J.  W.  Burgon,  afterwards 
Dean  of  Chichester,  thus  stated  the  grounds  of  his  oppo- 
sition to  the  nomination  of  Dean  Stanley  : 

'  I  cannot  think  the  advocate  of  the  Westminster  Abbey 
sacrilegious  Communion  ;  the  patron  of  Mr.  Vance  Smith, 
the  Unitarian  teacher  ;  the  partisan  of  Mr.  Voysey,  the  in- 
fidel ;  the  avowed  champion  of  a  negative  and  cloudy  Chris- 
tianity, which  is  really  preparing  the  way  for  the  rejection 
of  all  revealed  truth,  a  fit  person  to  be  selected  to  address 
the  youth  of  this  place  from  the  University  pulpit.' 


CHAP.  XXI 


THE  SELECT  TREACHERSHIP 


227 


On  the  nth  of  December,  1872,  the  nomination  was 
submitted  to  Convocation,  and  carried  by  349  votes  to  287. 
'The  victory,'  writes  Professor  Jowett, 

'  is  not  of  great  importance  to  the  University  or  to  the 
Liberal  Party  ;  but  I  am  glad  that  we  have  won,  and,  in 
one  point  of  view,  especially  glad.  I  do  not  think  that  we 
could  have  won  with  anyone  but  you.  I  was  surprised  to 
find  the  number  of  persons  who  came  up  unbidden  out 
of  respect  and  regard  for  you.  And  though  in  these 
wretched  contests  there  is  not  much  to  rejoice  in,  I  think 
that  you  and  Lady  Augusta  may  really  rejoice  in  the  proof 
that  a  great  many  persons  hardly  known  to  you  have  given 
of  their  attachment.' 

Thus  the  attempt  to  burden  Convocation  with  a  duty 
which,  except  as  a  matter  of  form,  had  ceased  to  belong  to 
it,  resulted  in  defeat.  The  opposition  was  not  supported 
by  the  recognised  leaders  of  the  High  Church  party,  who 
held  that  a  body  which  is  asked  to  pronounce  upon  the 
orthodoxy  of  a  clergyman  ought  to  be  composed  of  mem- 
bers of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  who  knew  that,  since 
the  passing  of  the  Universities  Tests  Act,  Convocation  had 
become  as  little  a  theological  body  as  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Among  those  who  voted  for  the  nomination  was 
the  venerable  Dr.  Lushington,  who,  at  the  age  of  ninety-one, 
travelled  from  London  to  vote  at  Oxford. 

'  This  Oxford  Tempest,'  writes  Stanley  on  December 
14th,  1872,  in  replying  to  congratulations, 

'  has  absolutely  been  one  of  the  most  delightful  incidents  of 
my  life :  no  trouble  whatever  (except  writing  such  letters 
as  the  present),  and  the  pleasure  of  receiving  so  many 
proofs  that  I  am  not  forgotten  by  my  friends,  known  or 
unknown,  young  or  old,  or  the  very,  very  old,  like  Hawkins 
at  80,  W.  W.  Hull  at  84  or  more.  Dr.  Bosworth  at  85,  and 
Dr.  Lushington  at  91.' 

As  a  protest  against  '  the  unfaithfulness  to  the  truth  of 
God  which  the  University  manifested  by  its  vote  in 

Q  2 


228 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


favour  of  Dean  Stanley,'  the  Dean  of  Norwich  (E.  M. 
Goulburn)  resigned  the  post  of  Select  Preacher.  '  If,'  he 
said  in  his  letter  to  the  Vice-Chancellor, 

*  the  pulpit  of  the  University  is  to  be  turned  into  a  vehicle 
for  conveying  to  our  youth  a  nerveless  religion,  without  the 
sinew  and  bone  of  doctrine,  a  religion  which  can  hardly  be 
called  faith  so  much  as  a  mere  Christianised  morality,  I 
for  one  must  decline  to  stand  there.' 

Dr.  Goulburn,  in  a  private  letter  to  Dean  Stanley, 
informed  him  of  his  resignation,  and  expressed  the  hope 
that  the  course  which  he  had  felt  compelled  to  pursue 
would  not  interrupt  their  friendship.  '  Many  thanks,' 
replies  Stanley, 

'  for  your  kind  letter  —  kind  and  cordial  as  always.  You 
may  be  assured  that  the  differences  of  opinion  which  we 
have  discussed  ever  since  the  days  when  we  travelled 
together  from  Geneva  to  Athens  have  never  diminished 
my  regard  for  you,  and  I  trust  never  will. 

'  As  to  the  particular  matter  of  which  you  speak,  it  has 
been  so  long  my  fate  to  encounter  misunderstanding  and 
opposition  that  I  cease  to  consider  it  as  a  subject  either  of 
surprise  or  annoyance. 

'  Indeed,  when  I  remember  the  same  kind  of  opposition, 
with  the  same  epithets  of  "  Rationalist,"  "  Latitudinarian," 
"  Socinian,"  "Heretic,"  "  Erastian,"  were  lavished  on  men 
of  whom  the  world  was  not  worthy,  and  with  wliom  I  am 
not  worthy  to  place  myself,  except  in  the  humble  endeavour 
to  walk  in  their  footsteps  —  Tillotson,  Chilling  worth,  Jeremy 
Taylor,  Cudworth,  Locke,  Arnold  —  I  know  not  whether  I 
should  not  rather  rejoice  to  share  their  obloquy. 

'  I  only  regret  that  excellent  persons  like  yourself  should 
feel  it  your  duty  to  thwart  the  efforts  of  those  who,  no 
doubt  with  many  imperfections,  are  striving  to  bring  out 
the  treasures  of  the  Bible,  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the 
Gospels,  and  to  show  that  religion  and  science  need  not  be 
opposed  to  each  other,  and  that  reason  is  the  means 
which  God  has  given  us  for  arriving  at  the  knowledge  of 
His  will. 

'  This  regret  is  increased  by  the  reflection  that  mean- 
while little  discouragement  —  I  might  say  much  encourage- 


CHAP.  XXI 


THE  ATHANASIAN  CREED 


229 


ment  —  is  given  to  the  return  of  the  grossest  superstitions, 
and  to  expressions  of  unchristian  uncharitableness. 

'This,  however,  only  makes  it  more  evidently  incumbent 
on  those  who  value  the  maintenance  of  pure  Christianity 
in  England  to  pursue  their  own  course,  as  best  they  can, 
in  the  hope  of  better  days,  and  in  the  faith  that  truth  will 
at  last  prevail. 

'  I  cannot  refrain  from  adding  the  pleasure  which  it  gives 
me  to  think  that  what  you  write  and  preach  has  a  soothing 
and  edifying  effect  on  those  to  whom  I  have  no  access,  just 
as,  probably,  there  are  those  to  whom  I  have  access  on 
whom  you  produce  no  result.' 

Out  of  the  heated  atmosphere  of  Convocation  the  dis- 
cussion was  finally  withdrawn  by  the  Archbishop.  While 
Dr.  Tait  plainly  stated  his  opinion  that  'the  best  plan 
would  be  to  remove  the  Creed  from  the  regular  services  of 
the  Church,  and  to  retain  it  in  the  Articles,'  he  admitted 
that  such  a  course  was  not  feasible.  He  therefore  consented 
to  the  appointment  of  a  large  Committee,  consisting  of  fifty 
members  of  the  two  Houses  of  Convocation,  which  was  to 
meet  in  December  1 872,  to  consider  the  question  by  the  light 
of  the  recent  debates.  In  the  interval  Dr.  Tait  appealed 
to  the  leaders  of  the  opposite  parties  to  agree  to  accept 
some  arrangement,  even  if  it  were  not  the  one  which  they 
themselves  advocated.  Stanley  at  once  responded  to  the 
appeal  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  was  made.  '  I  am  quite 
prepared,'  he  wrote  to  the  Archbishop  on  November  28th, 
1872,  'to  advocate,  not  the  best  course  abstractedly,  but  the 
best  course  practicable.'  '  An  explanatory  note,  however,' 
he  adds, 

'  I  cannot  support,  unless  combined  with  some  practical 
consequence,  and  I  shall  much  prefer  that  things  should 
remain  as  they  are,  rather  than  that  an  explanatory  note 
should  be  put  forward  as  the  remedy  for  allaying  the 
scruples  for  the  sake  of  which  the  Committee  is  convoked. 

'  I  consider  that  the  explanatory  note  has  always  been 
an  endeavour,  not  to  relieve  the  scruples  of  those  aggrieved, 


23© 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


but  to  retain  the  use  of  the  Creed  in  spite  of  the  objections 
felt  for  it.' 

On  this  view  of  the  matter  he  spoke  in  the  Committee. 
But  the  party  of  moderation  and  compromise  prevailed.  A 
Synodical  Declaration  was  drawn  up  and  agreed  upon, 
which  was  intended  ultimately  to  take  the  place  of  an 
explanatory  rubric  in  the  Prayer  Book.  This  Declaration 
was  brought  before  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation  for 
its  acceptance  in  February  1873,  and  was  carried  in  spite 
of  Stanley's  opposition.    '  I  know,'  he  said, 

'  that  if  we  continue  in  the  course  which  was  initiated  by 
"Tract  90,"  that  if  we  continue  in  this  constant  system  of 
making  anything  mean  anything,  it  is  very  possible,  nay,  it 
is  more  than  probable,  that  the  same  process  will  be  applied 
to  the  other  Creeds,  and  that  other  words,  which  you  may 
wish  to  retain  as  most  sacred,  will  be  explained  away  in 
the  same  way  as  the  Archdeacon  of  London  has  explained 
the  lucid  and  perspicuous  language  of  the  damnatory 
clauses  of  the  Athanasian  Creed.  It  is  this  danger  which 
I  have  seen,  with  regret,  constantly  growing  in  the  Church 
of  England  since  the  time  to  which  I  have  alluded,  thirty 
years  ago.  It  is  that  danger,  constantly  growing,  that  dis- 
regard of  the  plain  meaning  of  English  words,  that  makes 
me  look  on  these  explanations  with  more  than  a  passing 
emotion  of  melancholy.  Sometimes,  when  I  look  upon 
our  own  Church,  and  on  the  great  Church  of  Rome,  when  I 
think  how  900  bishops  of  the  Catholic  Church  have  con- 
descended to  receive  under  miserable  explanations  of  this 
kind  the  wretched  figment  of  the  Pope's  Infallibility — when 
I  regard  this,  and  regard  the  cognate  symptoms  in  our  own 
Church,  it  does  give  me  a  pang  of  sorrow  to  think  that  my 
years  have  been  extended  into  this  darkening  shadow 
which  is  now  passing  over  the  Church  of  Christ  —  to  think 
that  that  truthfulness,  that  straightforward  dealing,  that 
uprightness  of  purpose  which  characterised  the  much-abused 
eighteenth  century,  is  becoming  gradually  obscured  in  this 
cloud  —  let  us  hope  this  temporary  cloud  —  which  now  rests 
on  the  Church  of  England  and  the  Church  of  Rome.  But 
I  will  hope  better  things.  I  cannot  believe  that  even  this 
House,  with  all  its  subjection  to  those  sinister  influences  of 


CHAP.  XXI  THE  ATHANASIAN  CREED 


231 


which  I  have  spoken,  will  lend  itself  to  further  this  unhappy 
and  increasing  obscuration  of  the  consciences  of  the  clergy. '  ^ 

The  long  struggle  ended  in  May  1873  in  the  accept- 
ance of  the  Synodical  Declaration.^  Few  men  felt  more 
acutely  the  burden  of  the  'damnatory  clauses  '  than  Stanley. 
To  him,  no  explanation  of  the  meaning  the  words  were 
intended  to  have  could  be  satisfactory,  and  he  deeply 
lamented  the  loss  of  what  he  considered  to  be  a  great 
opportunity.  In  his  opinion,  the  Declaration  which  was 
adopted  not  only  gave  no  real  relief,  but  was  calculated  to 
impair  the  reverence  with  which  the  two  other  Creeds  were 
regarded.  'There  the  Creed  stands  now,'  he  said  a  few 
years  later, 

*  and  there,  thanks  to  this  waste  of  an  opportunity,  it  will 
go  on  standing  until  it  carries  off  the  other  two  Creeds 
upon  its  back.  When  that  day  comes  it  will  be  seen  who 
was  right  in  the  present  controversy.'  ^ 

The  Declaration  ran  as  follows  : 
'  For  the  removal  of  doubts,  and  to  prevent  disquietude  in  the  use  of  the 
Creed  commonly  called  the  Creed  of  St.  Athanasius,  this  Synod  doth  solemnly 
declare  : 

•  I.  That  the  confession  of  our  Christian  faith  commonly  called  the 
Creed  of  St.  Athanasius  doth  not  make  any  addition  to  the  faith  as  contained 
in  Holy  Scripture,  but  warneth  against  errors  vsfhich  from  time  to  time  have 
arisen  in  the  Church  of  Christ. 

'  2.  That  as  Holy  Scripture,  in  divers  places,  doth  promise  life  to  them 
that  believe,  and  declare  the  condemnation  of  them  that  believe  not,  so  doth 
the  Church  in  this  confession  declare  the  necessity  for  all  who  would  be  in  a 
State  of  salvation  of  holding  fast  the  Catholic  faith,  and  the  great  peril  of  re- 
jecting the  same.  Wherefore  the  warnings  in  this  confession  of  faith  are  to 
be  understood  no  otherwise  than  the  like  warnings  in  Holy  Scripture,  for  we 
must  receive  God's  threatenings,  even  as  his  promises,  in  such  wise  as  they 
are  generally  set  forth  in  Holy  Writ.  Moreover,  the  Church  doth  not  herein 
pronounce  judgment  on  any  particular  person  or  persons,  God  alone  being  the 
Judge  of  all.' 

Chronicle  of  Convocation,  Lower  House,  February  i2th,  1873,  pp.  131-2. 
Life  of  Archbishop  Tail,  vol.  ii.  p.  l6i. 


232  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1870 


Appendix  to  Chapter  XXI 

Fourth  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  appointed  to  inquire  into  the 
Rubrics  and  Ritual  of  the  Church  of  England.    London,  1870. 

Out  of  the  twenty-seven  Commissioners,  seventeen  signed  pro- 
tests against  the  recommendation  of  their  colleagues  to  retain  the 
Creed  in  the  pubhc  service  of  the  Church,  and  to  append  to  it  an 
Explanatory  Rubric. 

The  following  reasons  are  given  by  Stanley  for  his  protest : 
'  I .  Because  the  Creed  was  received  and  enforced  in  the 
Church  of  England  when  it  was  believed  to  be  "  the  Creed  of 
St.  Athanasius,"  whereas  it  is  now  known  to  be  the  work  of  an 
unknown  author,  not  earlier  than  the  fifth  century,  perhaps  as  late 
as  the  eighth. 

'  2.  Because  its  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is 
couched  in  language  extremely  difficult  to  be  understood  by  a 
general  congregation,  in  parts  absolutely  certain  to  be  under- 
stood in  a  sense  different  from  what  was  intended  by  the  original 
words ;  as,  for  example,  "  person,"  "  substance,"  and  "  incompre- 
hensible." 

'  3.  Because  it  is  never  recited  in  a  mixed  congregation  in  any 
other  Church  than  our  own. 

'4.  Because  the  parts  of  the  Creed  which  are  at  once  most 
emphatic,  most  clear,  and  most  generally  intelligible  are  the  con- 
demning clauses,  which  give  most  offence,  and  which  in  their 
literal  and  obvious  sense  are  rejected  by  the  Explanatory  Note 
which  is  now  proposed  to  be  appended  to  them. 

*  5.  Because  the  use  of  anathemas  in  the  public  services  of  all 
Churches  has  been  generally  discontinued. 

'  6.  Because  these  condemning  clauses  assert  in  the  strongest 
terms  a  doctrine  now  rejected  by  the  whole  civilised  world  —  viz. 
the  certain  future  perdition  of  all  who  deviate  from  the  particular 
statements  in  the  Creed. 

'  7.  Because  they  directly  exclude  from  salvation  all  members 
of  the  Eastern  Churches ;  to  whom,  nevertheless,  the  clergy  and 
the  bishops  of  the  Church  of  England  at  various  times,  and 


CHAP.  XXI         RITUAL  COMMISSION  REPORT 


233 


especially  of  late,  have  made  overtures  of  friendly  and  Christian 
intercourse  entirely  inconsistent  with  the  declaration  that  they 
"  shall  without  doubt  perish  everlastingly." 

*  8.  Because  the  passage  commonly  quoted  from  the  Authorised 
Version  of  Mark.  xvi.  16  in  their  defence  is  irrelevant — {a)  as 
being  much  more  general  in  its  terms  ;  (^)  as  being  of  very  doubt- 
ful genuineness ;  (^r)  as  being  in  the  original  Greek  much  less 
severe  than  in  the  English  translation. 

'  9.  Because  the  use  of  this  Creed,  and  of  those  clauses  espe- 
cially, has  been  condemned  by  some  of  the  most  illustrious  divines 
of  the  Church  of  England,  such  as  Chillingworth,  Baxter,  Bishop 
Jeremy  Taylor,  Archbishop  Tillotson,  Archbishop  Seeker,  Dr.  Hey, 
Dr.  Arnold,  Dr.  Burton,  Bishop  Lonsdale. 

'  10.  Because  the  use  of  the  Creed  arouses  scruples  in  candi- 
dates for  Ordination  which  can  only  be  overcome  by  strained 
explanations. 

'11.  Because  it  has  been  rejected  by  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  of  the  United  States  of  America,  which  is  in  full  com- 
munion with  the  Church  of  England,  and  whose  clergy  are  author- 
ised by  statute  to  minister  in  our  churches,  being  yet  under  no 
obligation  to  use  this  Creed. 

'12.  Because  it  is  a  stumbHng-block  in  the  way  of  almost  all 
Nonconformists. 

'  13.  Because  the  public  use  of  the  Creed  as  a  Confession  of 
Christian  Faith,  being,  as  it  is,  the  composition  of  an  unknown 
author,  and  not  confirmed  by  any  general  authority,  is  a  manifest 
violation  of  the  well-known  decrees  of  the  Councils  of  Ephesus 
and  Chalcedon. 

'  14.  Because  the  recitation  of  the  Creed  had  in  many  English 
churches  become  obsolete  till  it  was  revived  some  thirty  years 
ago. 

'15.  Because  many  excellent  laymen,  including  King  George 
III.,  have,  for  the  last  hundred  years  at  least,  declined  to  take 
part  in  its  recitation. 

'  16.  Because,  so  far  from  recommending  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  to  unwilling  minds,  it  is  the  chief  obstacle  in  the  way  of 
the  acceptance  of  that  doctrine. 

'  For  these  reasons  I  consider  that  the  relaxation  of  the  use  of 
the  Creed,  whilst  giving  relief  to  many,  ought  to  offend  none.  It 


234 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


has,  no  doubt,  a  historical  value  as  an  exposition  of  the  teaching 
and  manners  of  the  Church  between  the  fifth  and  ninth  centuries. 
It  has  also  a  theological  value,  as  rectifying  certain  erroneous 
statements,  and  as  excluding  from  the  essentials  of  the  Catholic 
Faith  the  larger  part  of  modern  controversy.  But  these  advan- 
tages are  quite  insufficient  to  outweigh  the  objections  which  are 
recorded  above,  and  which,  even  in  the  minds  of  those  disposed 
to  retain  the  use  of  the  Creed,  have  found  expression  in  an 
Explanatory  Note  tantamount  to  a  condemnation  of  it. 

'  With  regard  to  the  Explanatory  Note,  whilst  acknowledging 
the  benefit  derived  from  the  indirect  but  unquestionable  dis- 
couragement which  it  inflicts  on  the  use  of  the  Creed,  I  would 
humbly  state  the  reasons  why  it  appears  to  me  to  aggravate  the 
mischief  which  it  is  intended  to  relieve  : 

*  I.  Because  it  attempts  a  decision  on  a  complex  dogmatical 
and  historical  question  which  the  Commission  is  not  called  to 
offer,  and  which  it  has  not  attempted  in  other  instances  equally 
demanding  and  more  capable  of  such  explanations,  such  as  the 
Baptismal  Service,  the  Ordination  Service,  and  the  Visitation  of 
the  Sick. 

'  2.  Because  this  dogmatical  decision  was  carried  by  a  small 
majority  in  a  Commission  of  reduced  numbers ;  whereas  in  order 
to  have  any  weight  it  ought  to  have  received  the  general  concur- 
rence of  those  most  qualified  to  pronounce  it. 

'  3.  Because  the  words  in  the  Creed  which  it  professes  to  ex- 
plain are  perfectly  clear  in  themselves,  whilst  it  leaves  unexplained 
other  words,  such  as  "  person,"  "  substance,"  "  incomprehensible," 
which  are  popularly  understood  in  a  sense  different  from  their 
original  meaning,  and  which,  as  so  understood,  mislead  the  mass 
of  the  congregation,  and  even  preachers,  into  some  of  the  very 
opinions  so  terribly  denounced  by  the  condemning  clauses. 

'  4.  Because  the  statement  which  it  impHes  is  historically  false, 
viz.,  that  "  the  condemnations  in  this  Confession  of  Faith  "  do  not 
apply  to  the  persons  to  whom  they  evidently  were  intended  to 
apply. 

'5.  Because  the  main  statement  which  it  contains  is  either 
extremely  questionable,  or  a  mere  truism,  or  else  so  ambiguous  as 
to  be  only  misleading. 

'  6.  Because,  after  well  considering  a  similar  explanation  given 


CHAP.  XXI        RITUAL  COMMISSION  REPORT 


235 


in  1689,  Archbishop  Tillotson  thus  expressed  himself:  —  "The 
account  given  of  Athanasius'  Creed  appears  to  me  nowise  satis- 
factory.   I  wish  we  were  well  rid  of  it." 

*  7.  Because,  in  most  instances,  it  will  give  no  ease  to  those 
who  are  offended  by  the  use  of  the  Creed  in  public  services. 

'  8.  Because,  whilst  virtually  condemning  the  use  of  the  Creed, 
it  still  leaves  the  Rubric  enjoining  that  use. 

'  9.  Because  it  will  have  the  effect  of  increasing  the  existing 
burden,  by  seeming  to  state  that,  in  the  view  of  the  Commission, 
it  is  a  sufficient  remedy. 

'10.  Because  it  is  one  of  several  proposed  Explanatory  Notes 
which  appear  in  the  minutes,  and  which  are  manifestly  inconsistent 
with  this  and  with  each  other. 

'11.  Because  (in  the  language  used  by  our  Chairman  in  put- 
ting it  to  the  vote),  it  is  "illogical  and  unsatisfactory  "  '  (Report, 
pp.  xvii.,  xviii.). 


236  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 


CHAPTER  XXII 
1864-74 

STANLEY'S  LITERARY  WORK  — ITS  AMOUNT,  VARIETY,  AND 
FRESHNESS  — ITS  UNITY  OF  AIM— 'THE  THEOLOGY  OF 
THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY,'  1864  — THE  SECOND  PART 
OF  THE  'LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  JEWISH 
CHURCH,'  1865  — REVIEW  OF  'ECCE  HOMO,'  1866— 'MEMO- 
RIALS OF  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY,'  1867  — 'CONNECTION  OF 
CHURCH  AND  STATE,'  1868  — 'THE  THREE  IRISH  CHURCHES,' 
1869  — 'ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  STATE,'  1870  — '  LECTURES 
ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  SCOTLAND,'  1872 

The  discharge  of  duties  necessarily  associated  with  the 
custodianship  of  Westminster  Abbey  occupied  a  great 
measure  of  Stanley's  care  and  attention.  The  prominent 
part  which  he  took  in  the  debates  in  Convocation  required 
his  regular  attendance  at  its  meetings,  and  involved  him  in 
a  mass  of  correspondence.  As  a  preacher  his  popularity 
became  so  great  that  he  was  applied  to  from  all  quarters 
and  on  every  variety  of  occasion ;  and  he  so  rarely  refused 
his  aid  that  more  than  one  of  his  friends  remonstrated  with 
him  on  the  frequency  of  his  preaching.  His  position  in 
society  and  his  numerous  social  engagements  made  de- 
mands upon  his  time  which  became  increasingly  heavy. 
His  holidays  were  spent  in  foreign  tours,  which,  with  their 
long  journeys  and  his  insatiable  craving  for  information, 
would  have  rather  fatigued  than  refreshed  other  men.  Yet, 
in  spite  of  incessant  calls  upon  his  time  and  strength,  he 
completed  an  amount  of  literary  work  which,  even  in  a 
man  who  was  otherwise  unemployed,  would  have  been  con- 


CHAP.  XXII      FRESHNESS  OF  LITERARY  WORK 


237 


siderable,  and  which  in  one  so  preoccupied  was  remark- 
able. 

Scarcely  less  striking  than  the  amount  of  varied  work 
which  he  did  was  the  ease  and  effectiveness  with  which  it 
was  done.  One  main  source  of  the  freshness  which  per- 
vaded his  sermons,  his  conversation,  his  travels,  and  his 
literary  work,  was  the  economy  of  his  strength  which  he 
invariably  exercised.  He  had  most  clearly  recognised  the 
extent  and  the  limitations  of  his  powers.  In  travelling, 
he  required  all  arrangements  to  be  made  for  him,  steadily 
refused  to  see  any  sight  which  did  not  interest  him,  and 
consequently  was  never  tired.  In  society,  he  never  at- 
tempted to  make  conversation,  but,  talking  only  on  those 
subjects  which  aroused  his  enthusiasm,  spoke  with  a  fire 
that  glowed  and  warmed,  yet  never  burned  or  left  a  scar.  In 
preaching,  he  enforced,  and  illustrated  by  concrete  applica- 
tion from  past  or  contemporary  events,  only  those  moral 
and  spiritual  aspects  of  Christianity  which  to  him  were  most 
vital,  and  hence  his  sermons  were  never  dry,  laboured,  or 
dead,  but  were  always  picturesque,  interesting,  and  directly 
bearing  on  human  life  and  human  conduct.  As  a  man  of 
letters,  he  only  worked  as  his  powers  designed  him  to  work, 
and  only  wrote  as  he  loved  to  write,  and  therefore  his  writing 
is  never  forced,  but  always  natural  and  always  fresh.  And 
at  this  stage  of  his  career  there  ran  through  all  he  wrote 
a  continuous  current  of  hopeful  enthusiasm.  He  had  not 
learned,  as  he  learned  in  later  times,  to  despair  of  his 
generation,  or  to  think  that  he  had  lost  its  ear. 

To  say  this  of  Stanley's  work  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  he  had  the  rare  fortune  of  seeking  the  objects 
which,  by  character,  temperament,  and  intellect,  by  tastes 
and  interests,  by  social  and  official  position,  he  was  specially 
adapted  to  pursue.  Many  men  are  impeded  in  the  pursuit 
of  their  ideals  by  external  circumstances,  or  disqualified 


238 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864 


by  their  own  personal  and  mental  deficiencies,  or  hindered 
by  the  accidents  of  their  birth  and  position.  No  such  im- 
pediments, disqualifications,  or  hindrances  stood  in  the  way 
of  Stanley.  Whatever  obstacles  existed  to  the  attainment 
of  his  ideals  lay  outside  himself  ;  they  did  not  proceed  from 
within.  In  society,  in  his  literary  work,  in  the  pulpit,  on  the 
platform,  his  heart  and  head  worked  together  towards  one 
goal,  and  consequently  he  was  always  able  to  throw  his  best 
self  into  the  struggle  for  the  enlargement  of  the  Church. 
His  aristocratic  birth,  his  pecuniary  independence,  his 
official  position,  combined  to  arm  him  with  weapons  which 
needy  men,  of  humbler  origin,  and  occupying  more  sub- 
ordinate posts,  could  not  hope  to  wield. 

Fresh,  vigorous,  enthusiastic  as  Stanley's  work  always 
was,  it  would  have  wholly  missed  its  mark  if  he  had  aimed 
at  objects  beyond  his  powers,  or  if  he  had  attached  undue 
importance  to  the  part  which  he  was  himself  to  take  in  the 
attainment  of  his  ideals.  He  gauged  his  own  capacities 
with  singular  accuracy.  He  firmly  believed  that,  as  he 
wrote  to  M.  de  Circourt  in  1864, 

'  we  are  on  the  verge  of  a  religious  revolution  —  a  revolution 
more  gradual,  I  trust,  and  therefore  more  safe,  but  not  less 
important,  than  the  Reformation,  and  ending,  I  hope,  not 
in  further  divisions,  but  in  further  union.  If  I  could  con- 
tribute to  this  result  one  thousandth  part,  I  should  feel, 
humbly  and  thankfully,  that  I  had  done  my  work  in  life.' 

Looking  back  upon  past  history,  he  saw  that  religious 
systems  inevitably  undergo,  from  time  to  time,  a  sifting 
process,  when  men  ask  what  meaning  and  value  phrases, 
laws,  and  practices  possess,  and  what  response  they  make 
to  the  moral  nature  of  man.  Judaism,  Paganism,  Roman 
Catholicism,  had  each  in  their  turn  undergone  the  ordeal. 
The  Reformation  was  a  demand  for  reality  in  the  place  of 
formalism.   And  now  once  more,  in  the  nineteenth  century. 


CHAP.  XXII 


ITS  UNITY  OF  AIM 


239 


men  turned  to  the  Bible,  to  religious  history,  and  theology, 
and  asked  what  they  meant,  what  was  the  exact  truth 
about  them,  what  was  their  bearing  upon  life  and  conduct. 
At  such  a  moment  there  was  great  risk  that  the  essence 
and  the  accidents  of  religion  should  be  confounded,  and 
that  speculations  about  religion  should  be  identified  with  the 
religious  life  itself.  Stanley  saw  with  the  utmost  clearness 
the  danger  of  the  crisis,  and  proposed  what  seemed  to  him 
the  true  safeguard.  He  held  that  the  religious  life  con- 
sisted in  the  ardour,  the  love,  the  aspiration  with  which 
men  attach  themselves  to  the  fixed  and  permanent  objects 
of  the  Christian  faith.  He  held  also,  that  the  speculative 
ideas  of  every  age  must  necessarily  vary  with  the  incessant 
movement  of  the  human  intellect,  and  that  these  changing 
ideas  require  continual  readjustment  with  the  fixed  objects 
of  the  religious  life.  Their  reconciliation  is  the  task  of  the 
true  religious  reformer,  and  the  work  that  he  achieves  is  a 
true  religious  revolution. 

But  Stanley  never  attempts  to  assume  the  office  of  a 
religious  reformer.  He  is  content  to  be  a  religious  teacher. 
'  I  agree  with  you,'  he  writes  to  J.  C.  Shairp  in  1865, 

'that  the  prophet  of  the  second  Reformation  has  not  yet 
appeared.  Perhaps  he  never  will.  But  that  a  second 
Reformation  is  in  store  for  us,  and  that  the  various 
tendencies  of  the  age  are  preparing  the  way  for  it,  I  cannot 
doubt,  unless  Christianity  itself  is  doomed  to  suffer  a  por- 
tentous eclipse.' 

The  harmony  of  the  future  he  does  not  himself  attempt. 
He  felt  that  the  time  was  not  yet  ripe  for  any  successful 
effort  to  show  that  theology  and  science,  religion  and 
morality,  are,  so  far  as  they  meet,  one  and  indivisible.  He 
believed  that  he  was  living  in  an  age  of  transition,  and 
therefore  concentrated  his  efforts  as  a  religious  teacher  on 
holding  the  centre  of  religious  life  in  its  right  place,  on 


240  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864 

distinguishing  the  accidental  from  the  essential  elements  of 
Christianity,  on  maintaining  the  due  subordination  of  in- 
tellectual ideas  about  religion,  and  on  demonstrating  that 
the  Divine  virtues  of  the  Bible  were  neither  exhausted  by- 
theology  nor  impaired  by  scientific  discovery.  To  him, 
'  the  greatest  of  all  miracles  is  the  character  of  Christ,'  and 
the  wider  Christianity,  to  which  he  looked  forward  with 
hope,  consisted  in  the  personal  effort  to  realise  in  human 
conduct  the  Divine  image  of  truth  and  goodness  which  was 
revealed  in  Christ.  Believing  firmly  in  the  indestructible 
force  and  assimilating  powers  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity, 
he  said  with  the  first  pastor  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  '  I 
am  verily  persuaded  that  the  Lord  has  more  truth  yet  to 
come  for  us  —  yet  to  break  forth  out  of  His  Holy  Word.' 
Clinging  to  his  trust  in  the  progressive  historical  develop- 
ment of  Christianity,  he,  like  Archbishop  Whately,  refused 
to  think  '  that  the  Reformers  locked  the  door  and  threw 
away  the  key  for  ever.'  It  was  to  the  union  of  a  broad 
and  simple  Christianity  with  a  free,  enlightened  historical 
science,  that  he  looked  for  the  birth  of  a  great  theology, 
'  not  dead,  nor  dying,  but  instinct  with  immortal  life.'  In 
this  '  catholic,  comprehensive,  all-embracing  Christianity  ' 
lay  his  hopes  of  Christian  progress,  of  Christian  union,  of 
the  final  victory  of  faith  over  unbelief,  and  to  it  he  be- 
lieved that  'the  morrow,  the  coming  century,'  belonged. 

Upon  this  central  idea  all  his  powers,  tastes,  sympathies, 
and  interests  converge  with  a  directness  which  was  one  great 
secret  of  his  influence.  To  champion  free  inquiry  was  to  keep 
the  ground  open  for  the  reception  of  the  new  ideas,  which 
might  contain  the  element  of  a  larger  system.  To  protest 
against  '  the  spirit  of  combination  for  party  purposes,'  as 
being  itself  the  equivalent  of  '  what  the  New  Testament 
calls  heresy,'  was  to  cut  off  at  its  source  the  fount  of  division. 
To  place  '  all  that  was  ceremonial,  all  that  was  dogmatic, 


CHAP.  XXII 


nS  UNITY  OF  AIM 


241 


all  that  was  miraculous,  on  a  lower  level  among  the  essential 
elements  of  Christianity  than  what  was  moral  or  spiritual,' 
was  to  '  feel  truly  the  littleness  of  what  is  little,  as  well  as 
the  greatness  of  what  is  great.'  To  relax  stringent  terms  of 
subscription,  or  to  banish  from  use  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
was  to  remove  obstacles  which  sever  Church  from  Church 
and  alienate  Christian  from  Christian.  To  uphold  the  Esta- 
blished Church  in  England  was  to  maintain  the  guarantee 
of  toleration,  and  to  support  the  principle  of  comprehen- 
sion, against  the  intolerance  and  exclusiveness  of  sectarian 
prejudice.  To  solve  the  Irish  Church  Question  by  offering 
to  all  the  three  Irish  Churches  the  benefits  of  an  establish- 
ment, was  to  create  a  neutral  ground  on  which  all  might 
meet  in  peace,  and  to  promote  a  closer  intercourse  between 
the  Catholic,  Protestant,  and  Presbyterian  communions.  To 
meet  English  Nonconformists  in  social  and  friendly  inter- 
course, or  to  advocate  an  interchange  of  pulpits  between 
them  and  the  Established  clergy,  was  to  disarm  bitterness, 
and  to  prepare  for  '  that  Christian  unity  which  does  not 
permit  either  ecclesiastical  or  dogmatical  differences  to 
hinder  the  recognitions  and  feelings  of  a  common  relation- 
ship to  Christ.'  ^ 

It  is  with  thoughts  and  purposes  like  these  in  his  mind 
that  Stanley  approaches  parties  within  and  without  the 
Established  Church,  or  notes  the  points  of  agreement 
which  each  holds  in  common  with  other  communions.  It 
is  his  object  to  show  ecclesiastical  parties  that  the  Church 
of  England  is  historically  broader  and  more  comprehensive 
than  their  respective  conceptions  of  it  will  allow.  In  his 
address  on  the  Three  Irish  Churches  he  points  out  that  they 
all  equally  rest  for  the  essentials  of  their  faith  on  the  same 
one  and  indivisible  Foundation.  Similarly,  he  holds  up  his 
historical  mirror  to  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland,  the 

1  Letter  from  the  late  Dr.  AUon  to  Dean  Stanley,  February  15th,  1868. 
VOL.  II  R 


242 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


dissenting  Presbyterian,  and  the  Episcopalian,  and  tells 
each  in  turn  that  the  true  Church  is  something  greater  and 
better  than  any  or  all  of  the  rival  communions.  Himself 
the  staunchest  champion  of  the  existing  union  of  Church 
and  State,  he  practised  his  own  precept  of  making  'the 
most  of  what  there  is  of  good  in  institutions,  in  opinions, 
in  communities,  in  individuals.'  And  this  sympathy  was 
neither  a  strategic  union,  nor  an  armed  truce,  nor  the  toler- 
ance of  indifference.  It  was  the  real  fellow-feeling  which 
springs  from  the  power,  and  the  habit,  of  descending  into 
those  deeper  regions  of  thought  and  emotion  where  conflict- 
ing opinions  find  a  point  of  union.  To  the  Baptists  he  was 
grateful  for  the  preservation  of  '  one  singular  and  interest- 
ing relic  of  primitive  and  apostolic  times  ' ;  to  the  Quakers, 
for  '  dwelling,  even  with  exaggerated  force,  on  the  insigni- 
ficance of  all  forms,  of  all  authority,  as  compared  with  the 
inward  light  of  conscience  '  ;  to  the  '  Dissenting  Churches ' 
generally,  for  keeping  alive  *  that  peculiar  force  of  devotion 
and  warmth  which  is  apt  to  die  out  in  the  light  of  reason 
and  in  the  breath  of  free  inquiry.'  Religion,  he  told  his 
American  hearers,  could  ill  afford  to  lose  even  'the  Churches 
which  we  most  dislike,  and  which  in  other  respects  have 
wrought  most  evil.' 

And  as  with  Churches,  so  with  individuals.  In  the 
highest  utterances  of  each  man's  faith,  or  in  the  best 
moments  of  his  life,  he  rejoiced  to  find  the  common  ground 
of  religious  feeling  or  spiritual  aspiration.  He  delighted  to 
collect  instances  of  such  expressions  from  the  most  varied 
quarters.  It  was  a  Spanish  Roman  Catholic  who  said, 
'  Many  are  the  roads  by  which  God  carries  His  own  to 
heaven.'  ^  It  was  the  venerable  patriarch  of  German 
Catholic  theology.  Dr.  Dollinger,  who  said  that  theology 
must 

*  Cervantes  in  Don  Quixote,  Part  II.,  c.  8. 


CHAP.  XXII      SEARCH  FOR  COMMON  GROUND 


243 


'  transform  her  mission  from  a  mission  of  polemics  into  a 
mission  of  irenics  ;  which,  if  it  be  worthy  of  the  name, 
must  become  a  science,  not,  as  heretofore,  for  making 
war,  but  for  making  peace,  and  thus  bring  about  that 
reconciUation  of  Churches  for  which  the  whole  civilised 
world  is  longing.' 

In  their  loftiest  moods  of  inspiration,  the  Catholic 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  the  Puritan  Milton,  the  Anglican  Keble, 
rose  above  their  peculiar  tenets,  and  '  above  the  limits  that 
divide  denominations,  into  the  higher  regions  of  a  common 
Christianity.'  It  was  the  Baptist  Bunyan  who  taught 
the  world  that  there  was  '  a  common  ground  of  communion, 
which  no  difference  of  external  rites  could  efface.'  It  was 
the  Moravian  Gambold  who  wrote  : 

The  man 

That  could  surround  the  sum  of  things,  and  spy 
The  heart  of  God  and  secrets  of  His  empire, 
Would  speak  but  love.    With  love  the  bright  result 
Would  change  the  hue  of  intermediate  things, 
And  make  07ie  thing  of  all  theology. 

It  was  '  the  Bloody  Advocate,  Mackenzie,'  who,  what- 
ever his  illiberality  of  action,  rose  to  true  liberality  of 
thought  when  he  said,  '  I  am  none  of  those  who  acknow- 
ledge no  temples  but  in  their  own  heads.  To  chalk  out 
the  bordering  lines  of  the  Church  militant  is  beyond  the 
geography  of  my  religion.'  It  v/as  Dr.  Chalmers  who,  in 
the  very  heat  of  the  great  Disruption  of  the  Scottish  Church 
in  1843,  asked  the  question,  'Who  cares  about  any  Church, 
but  as  an  instrument  of  Christian  good .'' '  It  was  the 
Scotch  Episcopalian,  Archbishop  Leighton,  who  declared 
that  '  the  mode  of  Church  government  is  unconstrained ; 
but  peace  and  concord,  kindness  and  good-will,  are  indis- 
pensable.' It  was  the  founder  of  Irish  Presbyterianism 
(Edward  Bryce)  who  incisted  '  most  on  the  life  of  Christ 

^  See  the  Vision  of  Wandering  Willie  in  Redgaunilei. 

R  2 


244 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


in  the  heart,  and  the  light  of  His  Word  and  Spirit  on  the 
mind.'  It  was  Zwinglius  who  loved  to  dwell  on  'the 
meeting  in  the  presence  of  God  of  every  blessed  spirit, 
every  holy  character,  every  faithful  soul  that  has  existed 
from  the  beginning  of  the  world  even  to  the  consummation 
thereof.'  It  was  the  'main,  fundamental,  overpowering 
principle '  of  Wesley's  life,  not  to  promote  particular 
doctrines,  but  to  '  elevate  the  whole  Christian  world  in  the 
great  principles  of  Christian  holiness  and  morality.'  It  was 
the  solemn  proclamation  of  a  message  of  '  unity  and  com- 
prehension '  —  'in  necessary  things  unity,  in  doubtful  things 
liberty,  in  all  things  charity ' —  which  Richard  Baxter  carried 
to  'a  stormy  and  divided  age,'  that  gave  the  great  Noncon- 
formist leader  his  pre-eminence. 

This  was  the  spirit  in  which  he  delighted  to  see  men  rise 
above  the  spirit  of  parties.  It  was  Archbishop  Ussher 
who  assured  the  leaders  of  the  Ulster  Presbyterians  that 
'  it  would  break  his  heart  if  their  successful  ministry  in 
Ulster  were  interrupted.'  It  was  the  Protestant  Bishop  of 
Elphin  (Law)  who,  in  1793,  looked  upon  his 

'  Roman  Catholic  brethren  as  fellow-subjects  and  fellow- 
Christians,  believers  in  the  same  God,  partners  in  the  same 
redemption.  Speculative  differences  on  some  points  of 
faith  are,  with  me,  of  no  account.  They  and  I  have  but 
one  religion  —  the  religion  of  Christianity.  Therefore,  as 
children  of  the  same  Father,  as  travellers  on  the  same 
road,  as  seekers  of  the  same  salvation,  why  not  love  each 
other  as  brethren  ' 

It  was  a  Roman  Catholic  prelate  (Bishop  Moriarty)  who, 
at  the  very  crisis  of  the  Irish  Church  agitation,  testified  to 
the  fact 

'  that  in  every  relation  of  life  the  Protestant  clergy  who 
reside  amongst  us  are  not  only  blameless,  but  estimable 
and  edifying.  They  cannot  escape  our  observation,  and 
sometimes,  when  we  noticed  that  quiet  and  decorous  and 


CHAP.  XXII        'THEOLOGY  OF  igTH  CENTURY ' 


245 


modest  course  of  life,  we  felt  ourselves  giving  expression 
to  the  wish,  talis  cum  sis  ictinain  Piaster  esses  !  ' 

Animated  by  this  spirit  and  actuated  by  these  aims 
Stanley  threw  himself  into  his  literary  work.  During  the 
years  1864-72  the  chief  results  of  his  labours  were  his 
'  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church,'  and  his  '  Memorials  of 
Westminster  Abbey.'  The  first  he  regarded  as  the  main 
purpose  of  his  life,  and  his  chief  contribution  to  the  relig- 
ious revolution  that  he  believed  to  be  impending.  The 
second  he  looked  upon  as  an  interlude,  which  carried  him 
'too  far  away  from  the  vital  questions  of  the  day.'  While 
these  works  marked  the  main  direction  of  his  literary  activ- 
ity, there  gathered  round  them,  like  the  spray  flung  up  by 
some  impetuous  torrent,  a  cloud  of  addresses,  speeches, 
articles,  lectures,  essays,  pamphlets,  letters  to  the  '  Times,' 
and  sermons,  which  indicated  the  force  and  volume  of  the 
stream. 

In  1864  he  was  preparing  a  slight  memoir  of  Lord 
Elgin,  contributing  to  the  '  Edinburgh  Review  '  an  article 
on  the  Three  Pastorals,  and  engaged  in  a  controversy  on 
the  Court  of  Appeal  with  Pusey  and  Keble  in  the  'Times.' 
In  January  1865  he  writes  to  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley, 
describing  himself  as  busy  with  the  completion  of  his 
'  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church,'  which  he  was  also  deliv- 
ering at  the  Deanery  to  the  younger  men  among  the  Lon- 
don clergy.  Yet,  even  in  the  midst  of  this  work,  he  found 
time  to  prepare  and  read  before  a  meeting  of  London  clergy 
his  address  on  '  The  Theology  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.'  * 
Of  that  address  the  late  Archbishop  Magee  wrote  in  1884  : 

'  It  impressed  me  greatly,  not  only  for  its  great  charm 
of  style  and  its  thoroughly  Stanleyan  characteristics,  but 
because  it  brings  out  more  strongly  than  most  of  his  pub- 
lications that  orthodox  side  of  his  nature  which  he  used 

*  Printed  in  Fraier's  Magazine  for  February  1 865,  and  republished  in  the 
Essays  on  Church  and  State. 


246 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


sometimes  so  provokingly  to  conceal.  The  essay  is  a  de- 
fence of  Broad  Church  theology,  and  for  that  very  reason 
its  testimony  to  the  worth  of  dogma,  and  still  more  to  the 
intense  belief  of  the  writer  in  the  Divinity  and  supremacy 
of  Christ,  are  all  the  more  valuable.' 

In  the  autumn  of  1865  was  published  the  second  part  of 
the  '  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church.'  ^  The  volume  deals 
with  that  second  period  of  history  which  lies  between  the 
accession  of  Saul  and  the  fall  of  Jerusalem.  So  much  has 
been  already  said  on  the  Lectures  that  little  need  be  added. 
The  main  difference  between  the  two  parts  lies  in  the  form 
into  which  the  material  is  thrown.  In  the  first  period, 
poetry,  metaphor,  prophecy,  and  history  seemed  to  Stan- 
ley to  be  so  intermingled  that  continuous  narrative  was  in 
great  part  abandoned.  In  the  second  period  this  difficulty 
had  to  a  great  extent  disappeared.  Though  chronological 
uncertainties  still  remained,  the  substantially  historical  char- 
acter of  the  whole  is  almost  universally  admitted,  and  the 
sacred  history  speaks  for  itself  as  a  continuous  narrative. 

In  other  respects  the  aim,  the  spirit,  the  charm,  and  the 
method  of  the  treatment  are  the  same.  There  is  the  same 
bold,  yet  reverent,  handling  of  subjects  which  are  pecul- 
iarly liable  to  suffer  from  repetitions  of  conventional  lan- 
guage, and  from  traditional  methods  of  treatment.  There 
is  the  same  effort  to  interpret  the  Bible,  not  by  our  own 
fancies  concerning  it,  but  by  what  it  says  of  itself ;  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  letter  and  the  spirit ;  to  extinguish 
'  the  unnatural  war  between  faith  and  reason,  between 
human  science  and  divine.'  There  is  the  same  determi- 
nation to  allow  the  sacred  writings  to  speak  for  them- 
selves, and  the  same  consequent  increase  of  insight  into 
the  structure  and  meaning  of  each  part  of  the  sacred  records. 

^  Lectures  on  tlie  History  of  the  Jewish  Church,  Vol.  II.  London,  1865, 
8vo. 


CHAP.  XXII      'LECTURES  ON  JEWISH  CHURCH '  247 


There  is  the  same  conviction  that,  taken  with  all  its  difficul- 
ties, the  Bible  is  still  the  Book  of  books  to  all  mankind, 
the  fountain  and  the  bulwark  of  truth  and  holiness,  the 
guide  both  of  learned  and  unlearned  into  one  communion 
of  thought  and  feeling.  There  is  the  same  quiet  confidence 
that,  standing  high  above  the  human  speculations  which 
have  gathered  round  it,  it  contains  treasures  of  wisdom, 
justice,  toleration,  freedom,  and  love,  which  have  never 
yet  been  exhausted. 

In  both  volumes,  again,  there  is  the  same  tendency  to 
make  the  moral  and  spiritual  truths  of  the  Bible  the  fortress 
of  his  theology.  It  is  in  the  elevation  of  the  teaching  of 
Psalmists  and  Prophets,  and  not  in  their  minute  predic- 
tions of  future  events  that  Stanley  finds  the  surest  proof 
of  their  prophetic  spirit.  It  is  in  the  loftiness  of  character, 
which  rises  above  times  and  circumstances,  and  not  in  ex- 
traordinary displays  of  power  —  it  is  not  in  physical  signs 
and  wonders,  but  in  'the  clinging  trust  to  the  one  Supreme 
Source  of  spiritual  goodness  and  truth,  which  brings  men 
into  communion  with  the  Divine  and  Eternal'  —  that  he 
discovers  the  moral  prodigies  which  afford  an  evidence  of 
the  supernatural  that  no  criticism  can  shake.  Closely  aris- 
ing from  this  thought  is  his  handling  of  the  relations  which 
the  history  of  the  Jewish  commonwealth  bears  to  the 
events  of  the  Christian  Dispensation.  No  resemblance  of 
accidental,  outward  circumstances  can  illustrate  the  charac- 
ter of  Christ  or  justify  the  craving  for  personal  relations 
with  that  life.  The  heroes  and  saints  of  Judaea  —  or,  as 
Stanley  says,  'of  any  other  country'  —  are  only  'types  of 
Christ'  so  far  as  there  exists  any  real  harmony  of  moral  and 
mental  qualities  or  situations,  any  inward  community  of 
spirit  between  His  manifestation  and  their  likeness  to  Him. 
If  this  be  so,  then  the  prophets  and  kings  of  the  Old 
Testament  are  not  'machines  or  pictures';  they  are  living 


248  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1865 

men,  speaking  of  their  own  sorrows  or  joys,  their  own 
trials  and  difficulties,  and  colouring  the  utterance  of  their 
experiences  with  their  own  human  Jewish  or  Oriental 
peculiarities.  It  is  only  when  their  characters  are  under- 
stood that  their  real  resemblance  to  Christ  is  revealed,  and 
that  it  clearly  appears  in  what  respects  they  are  truly  types, 
'in  what  consists  the  character  and  Person  of  Him  whom 
we  are  called  upon  to  love  and  adore,  and  in  what  con- 
sists the  possibility  of  our  approach  to  Him.' 

The  two  volumes  are  alike  in  aim  and  spirit.  They  also 
possess  the  same  distinctive  charm  —  the  fascination  of  a 
style  which  is  graphic,  picturesque,  eloquent,  and  rich  in 
pertinent  illustration ;  the  same  grouping  into  vivid  pic- 
tures of  a  body  of  small  facts ;  the  same  grasp  of  the 
critical  and  salient  features  in  the  character  of  an  age  or  of 
an  individual.  In  both  volumes  there  is  the  love  of  illus- 
tration, which  is  never  satisfied  till  it  has  suggested  parallels 
or  contrasts,  and  compared  men  and  events  at  different 
times  and  in  different  countries ;  in  both  the  same  power  of 
narration,  which  gives  vivid  interest  to  the  dullest  or  most 
familiar  facts ;  in  both  the  same  capacity  of  detecting  the 
humours  of  history,  which  adds  force  to  the  vivid  narrative 
and  life  to  the  graphic  portraiture.  In  both  there  are  the 
same  wide  knowledge  of  human  nature,  the  same  intense 
sympathy  with  it  under  every  aspect,  the  same  belief  that 
its  essential  elements  are  identical  in  every  age,  and  the 
same  practical  application  of  the  lesson  of  the  remote  past 
to  the  tide  and  current  of  modern  life.  In  both  there  is 
the  same  imaginative  realisation  of  the  heroes  and  scenes 
of  Scripture,  which  transforms  half-mythical  figures  into 
human  beings,  and  brings  men  and  events  so  freshly  before 
the  eye  that  the  Bible  becomes  rich,  not  only  in  celestial 
truth,  but  in  vital  human  realities.  In  both,  finally,  there 
is  the  same  danger  of  painting  inaccurate  representations, 


CHAP.  XXII    'LECTURES  ON  JEWISH  CHURCH' 


249 


and  of  regarding  events  and  persons  with  too  modern 
an  eye. 

Both  vohimes  are  ahke  in  being  the  work  of  a  moralist 
who  is  writing  historically.  Always  on  the  watch  to  detect 
and  enforce  the  moral  and  spiritual  conclusions  which  sacred 
history  suggests,  Stanley  blends  the  teacher  with  the  his- 
torian, and  unites  the  historical  lecturer  with  the  moral 
essayist.  This  didactic  attitude  exercises  an  inspiring  in- 
fluence on  history,  and  gives  to  his  historical  writing  a 
peculiar  elevation.  But  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
the  attitude  does  not  deprive  his  work  of  some  of  its 
value,  at  the  same  time  that  it  adds  to  its  influence.  It 
is  difficult  to  combine  the  historian's  reverence  for  the 
importance  of  facts  with  the  preacher's  desire  to  draw 
from  them  moral  lessons.  And  the  effort  to  unite  the  two 
functions  helps  to  make  Stanley's  treatment  of  history,  in 
the  critical  sense  of  the  word,  unhistorical.  One,  and  the 
most  generally  accepted,  duty  of  historians  is  to  set  before 
the  mind  definite  views  of  what  actually  happened,  to 
describe  events  as  facts,  to  contribute  to  the  knowledge  of 
the  issues  they  involved.  In  Stanley's  work  it  is  often 
hard  to  discover  what  he  believes  to  have  really  taken 
place.  He  deals  with  aspects  of  life,  and  is  almost  more 
occupied  with  the  conceptions  which  later  ages  formed  of 
historical  events,  and  with  the  influence  that  they  have 
thus  exercised,  than  with  the  events  themselves.  He  offers 
a  vivid,  impressive  description  of  transactions  ;  he  creates 
a  belief  in  their  reality  ;  he  leaves  a  sense  of  their  first-rate 
importance.  But  the  part  of  the  past  which  he  brings  into 
most  prominence  is  one  that  is  often  ignored  —  it  is  the 
effect  on  national  and  individual  development  that  the 
conceptions  which  men  have  formed  of  history  have  pro- 
duced, and  may  still  produce. 

Professor  Maurice,  in  a  letter  dated  December  27th,  1865, 


250 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


criticises  one  of  the  most  novel  and  characteristic  positions 
assumed  by  Stanley  in  his  second  volume  of  lectures.^  The 
Professor  thanks  him  for  the  book,  which,  he  says, 

'  has  given  me  so  manj^  new  lights  on  the  Old  Testament 
history,  and  has  revealed  to  me  so  many  confusions  into 
which  I  had  fallen  respecting  it.  Your  conception  of  the 
relation  of  the  two  kingdoms  to  each  other,  many  as  are 
the  old  notions  and  impressions  which  it  disturbs,  has  too 
much  evidence  in  its  favour  not  to  commend  itself,  at  least, 
to  the  most  earnest  reflection  of  every  student.  Your 
clear  visions  of  the  different  prophets  and  kings  have 
made  me  ashamed  of  ever  having  ventured  to  say  my  say 
about  any  of  them. 

'  The  one  subject  upon  which  I  have  not  yielded  to 
your  arguments  is  that  of  the  priesthood.  I  do  not  dispute 
any  of  your  facts,  or  their  value ;  I  should  go  further  than 
you  go  in  speaking  of  the  sins  of  the  Jewish  priests,  and  of 
those  who,  rightly  or  wrongly,  have  borne  that  name  in  all 
countries  and  all  ages.  Priests,  Jewish  and  heathen  and 
Christian,  it  seems  to  me,  have  been  worse  than  other  men, 
because  they  themselves  have  offered,  and  have  led  man- 
kind to  offer,  sacrifices  to  Moloch  and  Ashtaroth  —  or,  in 
later  times,  emphatically  to  the  Devil  —  when  they  have 
been  appointed  to  offer  them  to  the  Eternal  God  of  Truth 
and  Love.  I  cannot  exempt  them  from  this  terrible  charge 
under  the  plea  that  they  had  not  the  very  highest  of  func- 
tions in  being  witnesses  that  all  creation  is  God's,  or  that 
any  mere  words  of  the  prophet,  grand  as  they  may  be,  could 
dispense  with  the  actual  offering  which  the  priests,  as  repre- 
sentatives of  their  nation  or  of  humanity,  were  to  bring. 

'  It  strikes  me  that  there  is  something  more  of  an  appeal  to 
mere  modern  sentiment,  in  your  description  of  the  butcherly 
and  soldierly  character  of  the  Jewish  priest,  than  I  find  in 
any  other  part  of  your  volume.  I  admit  that  the  priest 
was  the  butcher.  Did  he  not  thereby  testify  (i)  against 
the  Egyptian  worship  of  the  animal,  (2)  against  the  notion 
that  the  slaughter  of  animals  is  a  mere  gratification  of  the 
brutal  appetite .'' 

'  If  you  introduce  the  other  idea  —  that  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  —  if  you  consider  the  offering  of  animal  sacri- 
fices to  be  no  longer  the  priest's  duty,  because  the  Elder 

*  Lecture  XXXVI.,  in  Stanley's  Jexuish  Church  on  the  Jewish  Priesthood. 


CHAP.  XXII 


MAURICE'S  CRITICISM 


251 


Brother  of  the  Human  Race  has  offered  that  perfect 
sacrifice  of  the  will  which  can  alone  be  satisfactory  to 
God,  I  entirely  accept  the  change.  But  it  seems  to  me  to 
involve  the  principle  that  those  who  set  forth  this  Elder 
Brother  to  men  should  be  themselves  perpetually  commem- 
orating His  complete  sacrifice  by  claiming  the  right  to 
offer  up  themselves  and  all  human  creatures  to  the  living 
and  true  God ;  which  oblation  must  include  the  consecra- 
tion of  all  animal  and  vegetable  life,  of  all  things  as  well 
as  of  all  persons,  of  all  offices  and  tasks,  and  therefore  be 
inseparably  connected  with  the  Old  Dispensation,  taking 
up  its  fundamental  maxim  into  itself,  and  explaining  why 
its  mere  accidents  have  passed  away. 

'  In  this  sense  I  do  not  see  how  you  can  show  that  the 
prophetical  office  has  more  of  an  enduring  character  than 
the  priestly.  I  admit  the  permanence  of  the  first,  but 
certainly  with  as  manifest  an  alteration  of  its  outward 
appearances  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive.  I  fully  believe 
that  the  prophet  will  be  always  wanted  to  reprove  the 
abominations  of  the  priest  —  that  Savonarola  was  to  Alex- 
ander the  Sixth  what  Samuel  was  to  Hophni  and  Phinehas. 
But  I  think  the  true  prophet  will  always  have  to  rebuke 
prophets  who  speak  a  lie  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  as  well 
as  priests  who  cause  His  offering  to  be  abhorred.  Each 
of  those  offices,  like  the  royal,  subsists,  I  think,  in  its  orig- 
inal purpose  and  significance,  Christ  being  the  real  inter- 
preter of  each,  embodying  them  all  in  Himself,  Who  is  the 
same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever.  And  I  cannot  but 
feel  that  in  the  Southern  nations  of  Europe,  where  the 
priest  has  extinguished  the  prophet,  in  England,  where  the 
prophet  has  extinguished  the  priest,  in  the  United  States 
of  America,  where  there  has  been  an  obliteration  of  the 
king,  there  is  a  peril  to  that  which  has  exalted  itself,  even 
more  than  to  that  which  has  been  depressed. 

'  Nevertheless,  I  look  for  the  revival  of  each  land 
through  that  which  it  has,  in  a  measure,  reverenced :  the 
priesthood  will,  I  trust,  rise  up  for  the  deliverance  of 
France  and  Spain  and  Italy ;  the  preachers  (lay  and  cleri- 
cal) may  yet  do  something  for  England.  The  American 
people  may  assert  the  majesty  of  Christ's  kingdom  above 
their  own  sovereignty.  I  do  not,  therefore,  consider  you 
unpatriotic  for  giving  what  appears  to  me  an  exaggerated 
and  exclusive  prominence  to  the  prophet.    It  is  a  genuine 


252 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


English  belief.  But  if  England  is  to  serve  humanity,  I 
ask  of  it  justice  to  what  has  been  so  sacred  in  the  eyes  of 
the  other  nations.' 

'  I  felt  sure,'  Stanley  replies, 

'  that  you  would  not  approve  of  that  chapter,''  and  I  quite 
admit  that  "  there  are  more  things  "  in  the  old  priesthoods 
than  my  "  philosophy  "  is  able  to  "  dream  of."  What, 
however,  I  wished  to  bring  out  as  clearly  as  possible  was, 
that  in  those  outward  circumstances  in  which  both  the 
upholders  and  the  assailants  of  modern  priesthoods  find, 
as  they  sui^pose,  the  essentials  of  the  office,  there  is  no 
likeness  at  all  between  the  Christian  clergy  and  the  Leviti- 
cal  order,  and  that  the  sooner  the  parallels  between  them 
(except  in  so  general  a  form  as  to  be  unequal  to  support 
the  weight  of  modern  controversy)  are  disposed  of,  so  much 
the  better  for  a  right  understanding  of  the  whole  matter.' 

No  sooner  had  he  completed  his  Lectures  than  he  turned 
to  the  preparation  of  his  '  Memorials  of  Westminster.'  But 
here,  again,  he  did  not  allow  the  principal  work  on  which 
he  was  engaged  to  absorb  him  so  completely  that  he  had 
neither  interest  nor  leisure  for  other  topics.  Now  he  is 
writing  an  article  on  the  Form  of  Subscription  for  '  Eraser's 
Magazine.'  Now  he  is  preparing,  and  delivering,  two 
addresses  on  the  Unity  of  Christendom  and  Pusey's  Eireni- 
con, which  he  subsequently  worked  up  into  an  article  for 
the  '  Contemporary  Review.'  ^  Now  he  is  writing  to  the 
'Times'  (May  1866)  to  plead  the  cause  of  the  Monastery 
of  Monte  Casino,  now  contributing  to  the  same  newspaper 
(November  3rd,  1866)  an  obituary  notice  of  Bishop  Cotton, 
who  was  drowned  in  India  while  crossing  a  plank  from  the 
shore  to  the  steamer,  and  whose  loss  he  deplores  in  a  letter 
to  his  sister  Mary  : 

'  I  feel  almost  as  if  I  had  seen  him,  at  night,  missing 
his  footstep  on  the  plank  leading  from  the  steamer  to  the 

'  Ibid. 

*  Reprinted  in  Essays  on  Chttrch  and  State. 


CHAP.  XXII  REVIEW  OF  'ECCE  HOMO' 


253 


shore.^  For  the  magnitude  of  the  loss,  public  and  private,  to 
all  who  knew  him  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  console  myself 
or  anyone  else.  It  is  simply  one  of  those  irreparable  blanks 
which  go  on  darkening  our  course  as  we  advance  in  life, 
and  which  are  not  the  less  felt  because  they  come  in  such 
quick  succession. 

'  No  one  has  been  to  me,  and,  I  should  think,  to  many, 
so  unvarying,  so  faithful  a  friend.  Very  few  men  in  the 
Church  of  England,  certainly  in  the  Colonial  Church,  so 
exactly  filled  his  place.  For  all  this,  the  more  I  think  of 
it,  the  more  deeply  I  grieve.  But  for  the  manner  of  his 
death,  I  cannot  but  regard  it  as  full  of  consolation.  A 
sudden  departure  for  him,  of  all  men,  was  not  to  be  lamented. 
I  long  to  see  some  comment  upon  it.  It  was  heartbreaking 
to  see  in  the  newspapers  the  same  stony  telegram  repeated 
over  and  over  without  remark.' 

In  1866  he  reviewed  '  Ecce  Homo'  in  '  Macmillan's 
Magazine.'  To  Stanley,  the  publication  of  the  book 
appeared  as  one  of  the  signs  of  the  times,  and  as  a  pledge 
that  the  fruits  of  the  new  theology  were  to  be,  beyond  all 
previous  measure,  abundant.  Many  of  the  theologians  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  had  been  intent 
on  arranging  a  hortus  siccus  of  dogmatic  definitions,  and 
on  justifying  their  arrangement  by  Scriptural  texts.  Ewald's 
and  Kenan's  lives  of  Christ,  the  preaching  of  Frederick 
Robertson,  the  Bampton  Lectures  of  Liddon,  were  all,  in 
different  ways,  permeated  with  the  modern  spirit.  The 
theologians  of  the  nineteenth  century  insisted  on  knowing 
Him  in  whom  they  believe,  and  on  drawing  out  the  actual 
characteristics  which  alone  give  real  significance  to  theo- 
logical terms.  What  Christianity  wanted  was,  not  so  much 
a  revolution,  as  a  recognition.  'The  more  this  can  be 
done,'  writes  Stanley, 

'the  more  fully  it  is  understood  what  He  was,  what  He  did  ; 
what  is  meant  by  His  life,  by  His  death,  by  His  resurrection, 

*  The  first  report,  from  which  Stanley  is  writing,  was  inaccurate.  Bishop 
Cotton  was  returning  to  the  steamer  after  the  consecration  of  a  cemetery. 


254 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


SO  much  the  more  fully  will  the  Church  of'  our  day  under- 
stand the  sense  in  which  He  was  Divine  and  the  sense  in 
which  He  was  human.' 

To  this  end  he  regarded  '  Ecce  Homo  '  as  a  powerful  con- 
tribution. The  mystery  of  its  authorship  was  itself  a  fact 
'  worth  a  hundred  artificial "  Eirenicons,"  a  hundred  schemes 
of  occasional  confraternity  of  rival  sects.'  When  the  high- 
est subject  of  theology  could  be  so  treated  that  the  author 
was  conjectured  to  be  either  a  Roman  Catholic,  a  Protestant, 
a  Nonconformist,  or  an  American  U nitarian,  then,  he  argues, 
it  was  evident  that  the  essence  of  Christianity  lay  in  the 
doctrines  which  these  rival  communions  held  in  common, 
and  not  in  the  differences  by  which  they  were  divided.  In 
its  representation  of  the  character  and  teaching  of  Christ 
he  found  an  Evangelical  Christianity  which,  without  looking 
to  abstract  doctrine  or  precision  of  dogmatic  statement  for 
the  salvation  of  the  world,  relied  on  truth  and  charity 
as  superior  to  the  virtue  of  orthodoxy,  and  stirred  the 
inmost  soul  to  the  enthusiasm  which  purifies  and  strength- 
ens both  faith  and  practice  by  establishing  His  transcend- 
ent claim  on  the  allegiance  of  our  moral  and  spiritual 
natures. 

In  the  following  letter  he  gives,  with  all  the  frankness 
of  private  correspondence,  his  impressions  of  'Ecce  Homo.' 
'  It  had  to  me  the  same  rare  interest,'  he  writes  in  February 
1866, 

'that  was  excited  by  Renan's  book,  namely,  the  feeling  that 
here  was  an  attempt,  in  one  case  as  the  other,  by  a  mind 
of  undoubted  power,  to  grasp  the  vital  points  of  the  greatest 
subject  in  all  history.  As  regards  the  appreciation  of  the 
character  and  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel  as  a  whole,  I  need 
hardly  say  that  it  is  all,  and  more  than  all,  that  Renan  has 
achieved,  without  those  terrible  blotches  which  so  disfigure 
the  truth  and  grandeur  of  the  conception  given.  Perhaps 
the  chapter  which  most  struck  me  in  this  respect  was 
that  on  the  Indignation  of  Christ.    If  in  some  respects  (as 


CHAP,  xxn 


REVIEW  OF  'ECCE  HOMO' 


255 


in  the  explanation  of  the  Prayer  on  the  Cross)  the  repre- 
sentation of  it  is  carried  to  excess,  I  cannot  but  think  that 
this  is  not  more  than  is  required  to  compensate  for  the 
almost  total  abeyance  of  this  side  of  the  Divine  character 
in  the  mind  of  Christendom  for  so  many  ages.  In  the  same 
way,  I  am  also  inclined  to  pardon  the  corresponding  exag- 
geration in  Renan  of  the  joyous,  festive  side  of  the  history, 
which  shocks  the  world  chiefly  because  its  unquestionable 
truth  has  so  long  been  obscured. 

'  The  style  and  the  mode  of  delineating  the  character 
appear  to  me  to  have  struck  with  marvellous  tact  and 
feeling  the  true  historical  chord,  without  losing  a  sense  of 
the  infinite  possibilities  and  capacities  wrapped  up  in  the 
character  ;  and  to  have  maintained  the  sense  of  reverence, 
without  micrging  it  in  that  cloud  of  conventional  generalities 
which  have  so  fatally  obscured  all  ordinary  representations 
of  the  subject. 

'  May  I  venture  to  make  a  few  criticisms 

'  First,  as  I  read  the  Preface  and  parts  of  the  book  itself, 
I  am  oppressed  with  an  apprehension  lest  there  may  be 
some  arriere  pensee  for  which  I  am  not  prepared,  some 
secret  polemic,  which  may  leap  out  from  behind  a  covert, 
and  take  advantage  of  my  genuine  admiration.  If  this  be 
too  suspicious,  you  must  ascribe  it  to  the  experience  of 
one  who  has  seen  too  much  of  the  snares  and  pitfalls  of  the 
controversial  world. 

'  Secondly,  I  am  struck  from  time  to  time  with  the 
thought  that  the  writer  contemplates  the  Christian  kingdom 
as  being  not  merely  in  its  historical  development  (as  it  there 
undoubtedly  is),  but  in  its  original  essence  and  intention, 
an  outward  political  institution.  I  allude  particularly  to 
the  chapter  on  Baptism,  and  especially  to  the  literalising 
interpretation  of  "water."  I  gladly  recognise  that  the  rest 
of  the  volume  looks  in  another  and  higher  direction,  and 
hope  that  here,  as  in  the  other  case,  I  may  be  quite  mis- 
taken. The  too  meagre  and  literal  view  of  Baptism  seems 
to  me  to  extend,  though  in  a  much  less  degree,  to  the  view 
of  the  Lord's  Supper. 

'  Thirdly,  I  think  that  the  language  about  the  Gospel 
miracles  might  have  been  worded  so  as  more  exactly  to 
meet  all  the  facts  of  the  case. 

'  I  am  always  jealous  of  seeing  the  word  supernatural 
applied  to  acts  which,  on  any  hypothesis,  are  the  least 


256 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


1866 


directly  convincing  manifestations  of  that  which  is  most 
above  Nature.  And  though  I  quite  appreciate  and  gladly 
welcome  the  force  of  the  remarks  which  distinguish  the 
Gospel  miracles  from  others,  especially  in  their  relation  to 
Christ  Himself,  yet  I  feel  that  there  should  always  be  a 
recognition  of  the  fact,  impressed  upon  us  by  the  whole 
modern  view  of  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  that 
miracles  may  be  thrown  into  the  shade,  and  yet  the  sub- 
stance and  value  of  the  history  and  characters  remain 
unshaken. 

'  Fourthly,  I  am  inclined  (though  I  have  no  right  to 
speak  on  such  a  matter,  and  feel,  moreover,  that  it  is  quite 
subordinate  to  the  main  argument)  to  think  that  the  con- 
trast of  the  relative  importance  of  the  teaching  and  life  of 
Christ  —  and  of  Socrates  —  is  somewhat  overstated.  On  the 
one  hand,  what  would  be  the  value  of  the  Cross  and 
Resurrection  without  that  insight  into  the  mind  which  is 
displayed  in  the  teaching  —  according  to  the  lines  of 
Bunyan,  which  I  am  never  tired  of  quoting  as  my  confession 
of  Faith  : 

Blest  Cross  —  Blest  Sepulchre  —  blest,  rather,  He  — 
77,!^  Man  that  there  was  put  to  shame  for  me. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  confess  that,  for  my  own  part,  the 
life  of  Socrates  as  given  in  Grote's  eighth  volume  is  far  more 
impressive  to  me  than  anything  I  ever  read  of  his  teaching. 
And,  to  me,  the  character  and  teaching  of  Christ  seem  to 
gain  by  being  put  in  the  same  parallel,  so  as  to  bring  out 
more  strongly  the  infinite  superiority. 

'  To  return  to  the  general  drift  of  the  book,  it  bids  fair 
to  realise  what  has  been  long  a  dream  of  my  waking  hours 
—  the  hope  that  the  actual  description  of  what  Christ  was 
and  is  for  human  history  will  be  as  a  new  revelation  —  so 
powerful,  so  conciliatory  —  yet  so  long  neglected  or  un- 
known, and  therefore  so  little  expected. 

'  Ewald  would  have  done  this,  or  nearly  this,  had  he  not 
been  a  German;  Renan,  to  a  great  extent,  had  he  not  been 
a  Frenchman.  The  writer  of  this  book  has  had  the  won- 
derful advantage  of  being  an  Englishman.' 

In  1867  he  was  appointed  a  member  of  the  Ritual 
Commission,  and  was  a  regular  attendant  at  the  numerous 
meetings  which  preceded  the  publication  of  its  first  Report 


CHAP.  XXII      '■MEMORIALS  OF  WESTMINSTER-' 


257 


in  August.  In  the  course  of  the  same  year  he  contributed 
two  articles  to  the  '  Edinburgh  Review,'  one  on  Ritualism,^** 
the  other  on  the  Due  de  Broglie's  book,  '  L'EgHse  et 
L' Empire  Romain  au  IV""  Siecle.'  The  bulk  of  the  latter 
article  is  devoted  to  the  Council  of  Constantinople.  '  But 
M.  de  Broglie's  picture,'  says  Stanley,  '  of  the  littleness 
and  futility  of  this  Council  is  doubly  valuable  from  the  time 
when  it  appears.'  He  then  draws  one  of  his  characteristic 
parallels  between  the  approaching  CEcumenical  Council  at 
Rome  and  the  approaching  Pan-Anglican  Synod  at  Lam- 
beth: 

'  The  Roman  Council  is  intended,  if  we  may  believe 
common  rumour,  if  not  by  the  venerable  Pontiff  himself,  at 
least  by  his  most  influential  advisers,  to  be  called  together 
partly  for  the  sake  of  suppressing  an  obnoxious  prelate, 
the  Cardinal  Andrea  at  Subiaco,  partly  in  the  hope  of 
adding  to  the  Articles  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith  two 
new  dogmas  —  one  on  the  Infallibility  of  the  Pope,  the  other 
on  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  The  Anglican 
Council  is  intended  —  not,  indeed,  by  the  venerable  Primate 
who  has  issued  the  invitations,  but  by  the  prelates  [the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  and  the  Bishop  of  Montreal]  at 
whose  request  they  were  issued,  and  with  whom  the  whole 
project  originated  —  to  be  called  together  partly  for  the  sake 
of  suppressing  an  obnoxious  bishop  in  South  Africa,  partly 
in  the  hope  of  adding  two  new  dogmas  to  the  faith  of  the 
Church  of  England  —  one  on  the  Verbal  Inspiration  of 
Scripture,  the  other  on  the  Everlasting  Torments  of  Hell.' 

In  December  of  the  same  year  (1867)  appeared  the 
'  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey.'  To  Stanley,  the 
Abbey  was  the  representative  of  the  religious  life  of  England ; 
from  it  he  drew  illustrations  of  his  best  hopes  of  humanity 
and  of  the  Church;  in  it  he  saw  the  image  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  history  and  of  God's  dealings  with  the  English  nation. 


'  Edinburgh  Review,  April  1S67.  "  Ibid.  July  1 867. 

'  Memorials  of  Westmimler  Abbey.    London,  1868,  8vo. 

VOL.  II  S 


258 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


To  make  its  treasures  known  to  the  people  of  England  was 
one  of  the  main  objects  of  his  life,  and  from  the  moment 
of  his  appointment  to  the  Deanery  he  had  determined  to 
write  its  history.  As  the  historian  of  the  Abbey,  he  was 
actuated  by  the  same  ideal  which  governed  his  adminis- 
tration of  its  affairs.  In  writing  its  Memorials  ;  in  choosing 
the  preachers  to  occupy  its  pulpit ;  in  inaugurating  musical 
services  and  services  for  children  ;  in  affording  to  laymen,  or 
to  clergymen  of  other  communions,  the  opportunity  of 
speaking  within  its  walls ;  in  opening  its  consecrated  soil 
as  a  place  of  interment  for  men  of  genius  or  distinction ; 
in  his  love  and  care  for  its  buildings,  in  his  delight  to  guide 
parties  of  working-men  through  the  Abbey  and  its  pre- 
cincts —  he  was  filled  with  the  one  wish  to  make  Westminster, 
in  the  highest  and  fullest  sense,  the  centre  and  representa- 
tive of  religious  and  national  life. 

In  the  midst  of  his  multifarious  literary,  social,  and 
ecclesiastical  activity,  the  subject  of  the  '  ?.Iemorials  of  West- 
minster '  had  been  steadily  pursued.  It  appears  in  1864, 
in  a  letter  from  Provins  on  the  doings  of  Edmund  Crouch- 
back,  whose  tomb  and  recumbent  effigy  are  among  the 
most  interesting  of  the  Abbey  monuments.  It  rises  to 
the  surface  during  his  foreign  tour  in  1865,  when  he  visits 
Rheims  'in  order  to  compare  it  with  Westminster,'  and 
combines  the  scenes  of  the  coronation  of  French  sovereigns 
at  Rheims  and  their  funerals  at  St.  Denis  into  '  a  French 
Westminster,'  or  when  he  visits  the  Chapel  of  St.  Lucius  at 
Coire,  'where  Lucius,  the  legendary  founder  of  Westminster 
Abbey,  King  of  Britain,  and  afterwards  Bishop  of  Coire, 
preached  so  loud  that  his  voice  could  be  heard  four  leagues 
off.'  At  Pisa,  in  1866,  he  is  'glad  to  see  that  the  modern 
monuments  in  the  Campo  Santo  have  played  as  bad  pranks 
with  the  old  architecture  as  they  have  in  Westminster 
Abbey ' ;  at  Florence  he  obtains  an  introduction  to  the 


CHAP.  XXII      'MEMORIALS  OF  WESTMINSTER' 


259 


keeper  of  the  archives,  that  he  might  have  '  a  thorough 
explanation  of  the  history  of  Santa  Croce,  the  Florentine 
Westminster  Abbey' ;  at  Vallombrosa,  the  spectacle  of  the 
evicted  prior  and  monks  suggests  to  him  that  '  so  departed, 
300  years  ago,  the  monks  of  Westminster :  but  Westminster 
has  still  remained  with  something  worthy  of  its  great  name, 
while  Vallombrosa  will  in  a  few  years  be  nothing  but  a 
name.'  At  Le  Puy,  in  1867,  he  notices  that  the  strange, 
fantastic  basaltic  pillar  which  is  dedicated  to  '  Our  Lady  of 
France '  was  taken  possession  of  by  the  Virgin  with  a 
'miraculous  dedication  prepared  by  herself,  like  St.  Peter  at 
Westminster.'  At  other  times  special  portions  of  the  same 
history  are  studied.  Thus,  in  November  1865  he  speaks  of 
himself  as  '  immersed  in  the  history  of  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor, in  preparation  for  the  celebration  of  the  Sooth  anni- 
versary of  the  dedication  of  the  Abbey.'  The  anniversary- 
service^^  was  held  on  December  28th,  1865,  and  'although 
on  a  week-day,  the  Church  was  crowded.'  Still  greater 
crowds  attended  the  memorial  service  on  December  25th, 
1866,  when  the  Sooth  anniversary  of  the  Coronation  of 
William  the  Conqueror  in  Westminster  Abbey  ^*  was  cele- 
brated. The  proof  which  the  attendance  at  these  ser- 
vices afforded  'of  the  interest  that  is  felt  by  all  classes 
in  the  history  of  this  great  institution  '  encouraged  and 
invigorated  him  in  the  prosecution  of  his  laborious  task. 
In  April  1866  it  is  evident,  from  the  paper  on  Westmin- 
ster Abbey  which  he  read  before  the  Royal  Institution 
of  Great  Britain,  that  the  plan  of  the  Memorials  was 
already  formed  in  his  mind,  and  that  it  only  remained  to 
group  round  the  skeleton  outline  the  necessary  facts  and 
details. 

The  Dedication  of  Westminster  Abbey.  London,  1866,  8vo.  Reprinted 
in  the  Sertnons  on  Various  Occasions. 

"  The  Coronation  of  William  the  Conqueror.  London,  1867,  8vo.  Re- 
printed in  the  Sermons  on  Various  Occasions. 


26o 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


Even  allowing  for  the  assistance  which  was  eagerly  ren- 
dered by  his  friends,  the  compilation  of  so  large,  and,  in 
its  way,  so  complete,  a  work  as  the  '  Historical  Memorials 
of  Westminster  Abbey'  is  a  remarkable  feat  of  energy  and 
literary  facility.  In  this  thick  octavo  volume  he  tells  the 
history  of  the  foundation  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Peter,  un- 
ravels the  continuous  threads  of  diverse  elements  which 
entwine  its  fortunes  with  the  history  of  the  nation,  and 
revives  the  memories  of  the  illustrious  men  and  women 
who  lie  buried  within  its  walls.  Crowded  with  informa- 
tion, and  teeming  with  anecdote  and  illustration,  the 
Memorials  form  a  biographical  dictionary  without  its  dul- 
ness.  To  the  personal  interest  of  the  building  it  is  a 
copious  guide,  and  its  composition  is  marked  by  all  Stan- 
ley's nice  discrimination  of  analogies  or  contrasts,  his 
mastery  of  facts  and  details,  his  sympathy  with  all  classes 
and  professions  among  his  fellow-countrymen,  his  appre- 
ciation of  truth,  nobility,  and  goodness,  wherever  they 
exist.  Nothing  in  its  way  can  be  more  characteristic  of 
Stanley  than  his  suggestive  treatment  of  the  royal  tombs. 
In  no  other  country,  he  points  out,  is  the  same  building 
connected  with  the  deaths  as  well  as  the  lives  of  sover- 
eigns, with  their  coronations  as  well  as  their  funerals.  In 
no  other  country  have  the  ashes  of  the  great  citizens  of  the 
nation  mingled  with  the  dust  of  its  kings.  The  Monarchy 
of  France  might  not  have  fallen  in  its  imperial  isolation 
had  her  poets,  warriors,  and  statesmen  surrounded  her 
rulers,  as  with  a  guard  of  honour,  after  their  deaths. 

No  opportunity  of  this  kind  is  missed  by  Stanley ;  and 
as  a  proof  of  his  industry,  his  power  of  amassing  facts,  and 
his  literary  facility,  the  Memorials  is  a  remarkable  work. 
But  the  volume  is  not  the  most  successful  or  artistic  of  his 
books.  It  has  defects  which  arise,  partly  from  the  limita- 
tions of  his  powers,  partly  from  the  form  of  its  composition. 


CHAP,  xxii      'MEMORIALS  OF  WESTMINSTER''  26 1 


On  its  architectural  side  it  is  deficient,  for  architecture  was 
a  subject  on  which,  Hke  music,  he  professed  profound  igno- 
rance. Another  defect  arises  from  its,  perhaps  inevitable, 
diffuseness  of  aim.  In  the  '  Memorials  of  Canterbury  '  he 
seizes  certain  representative  figures,  and  round  them  groups 
all  the  facts  and  minute  details  which  give  them  life  and 
reality.  In  the  '  Memorials  of  Westminster  '  he  was  una- 
ble, or  unwilling,  to  pursue  the  same  process,  and  the  wide 
range  of  the  historical  facts  that  are  accumulated  increases 
the  disconnectedness.  Unlike  its  predecessor,  it  is  rather 
a  book  of  reference  than  a  book  to  read.  He  himself  felt 
the  same  impression  which  the  Memorials  produced  on 
others.  He  considered  its  compilation  as  one  of  the  inev- 
itable drawbacks  of  his  removal  to  Westminster.  '  It  is 
not,'  he  writes  to  Professor  Max  Miiller,  '  a  good  book,  nor 
one  that  in  itself  touches  the  vital  questions  of  the  age. 
But  my  position  here  made  it  necessary,  and  therefore  it 
has  been  written.'  The  encyclopaedic  character  of  the 
volume  wearied  him,  and  the  mere  chronological  or  topo- 
graphical grouping  of  details  which  were  only  associated 
by  their  connection  with  one  building,  and  which  nowhere 
converged  on  a  common  centre,  afforded  him  but  little 
scope  for  the  display  of  his  most  characteristic  gifts. 
Where  space  and  subject  permit,  as  in  the  description  of 
the  founder  of  the  Abbey,  he  uses  his  vivid  historical  imagi- 
nation with  brilliant  effect.  The  character  and  the  figure  of 
Edward  the  Confessor,  with  his  flushed  rose-red  face,  con- 
trasted with  the  milky  whiteness  of  his  waving  hair  and 
beard,  his  thin  pale  hands,  and  startling  peals  of  unearthly 
laughter,  are  painted  with  all  his  picture-making  power. 

Two  months  after  the  publication  of  the  Memorials  he 
delivered  his  address  on  the  '  Connection  of  Church  and 
State  '  at  Sion  College.  The  address,  which  was  subse- 
quently printed  in  the  form  of  a  pamphlet,  was  given  in 


262 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


February  1868.^^  It  involved  him  in  a  mass  of  correspond- 
ence. Among  the  letters  which  poured  in  upon  him  from 
all  sides  was  one  from  a  Nonconformist,  personally  un- 
known to  him,  who  invited  him  to  join  the  Nonconformist 
body,  on  the  ground  that  the  union  of  conflicting  opinions 
within  one  Church  magnified  animosities  and  contradic- 
tions. The  following  passage  is  extracted  from  the  long 
reply  which  Stanley  wrote  to  his  correspondent : 

*  That  animosities  and  contradictions  are  intensified  by 
being  brought  face  to  face  within  one  society  is  true,  but 
I  consider  this  to  be  an  evil  which  a  National  Church 
shares  with  the  State  and  with  the  family,  and  which,  as 
in  the  case  of  parties  in  the  State  and  of  divers  characters 
in  the  family,  is  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  advan- 
tage of  variety,  by  the  occasion  for  self-control,  and  by  the 
experience  of  divergent  opinions. 

'  I  venture  to  think  that,  even  in  Nonconformist 
Churches,  unless  they  are  extremely  small,  or  unless  the 
governing  force  be  very  severe,  the  same  principle  of 
diversity  in  unity  must  exist  in  some  degree ;  and  I  see  no 
complete  escape  from  it,  except  in  that  which  I  for  one 
regard  as  the  only  legitimate,  and  perhaps  as  the  ultimately 
destined,  issue  of  the  recoil  from  National  Churches,  viz., 
absolute  Individualism.  This,  which  would  demand  the 
total  dissolution  of  all  Churches  (in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  word),  may  be  the  end  to  which  we  are  approaching,  in 
which  there  will  be  no  outward  religious  society  at  all,  and 
each  human  soul,  as  in  the  intellectual,  so  in  the  religious 
world,  will  find  out  for  itself  its  own  food  and  its  own  com- 
panions. But  in  the  interval  I  feel  bound  to  make  the 
most  of  the  institutions  we  have,  and  the  National  Church, 
I  feel  sure,  has  capabilities  which  have  never  yet  been  fully 
developed,  and  which  are,  in  some  respects,  more  fully  in 
harmony  with  the  age  than  those  of  the  Nonconformist 
Churches. 

'  That  the  English  formularies  have  many  defects  I  quite 
allow,  and,  as  you  know,  I  am  constantly  labouring  to  get 
them  altered,  and  have  in  part  succeeded.    But  I  do  not 

1^  The  Connection  of  Church  and  State.  London,  1868,  8vo.  Reprinted 
in  Essays  on  Church  and  Slate. 


CHAP.  XXII     'THE  THREE  IRISH  CHURCHES' 


263 


wish  to  eradicate  every  element  on  which  the  so-called 
catholic  tendencies  of  the  Christian  mind  can  feed.  In 
two  or  three  instances  we  have  them  in  excess.  But  so 
long  as  public  worship  is  conducted  with  any  outward  or 
any  ancient  forms,  even  though  it  be  only  the  two  Sacra- 
ments, and  so  long  as  any  sacred  art,  or  architecture,  or 
order  of  clergy  is  tolerated  at  all,  so  long  I  expect  the  ten- 
dencies towards  sacerdotalism  and  Ritualism  to  appear, 
even  in  the  most  Protestant  Churches.  That  a  vast 
J  amount  of  intolerance  is  bred  amongst  us  I  freely  confess, 
and,  as  you  know,  I  have  been  as  much  exposed  to  its 
attacks  as  anyone ;  yet  still  I  feel  that  I  should  not  be  as 
free,  nor  find  a  position  so  well  suited  to  me,  in  any  Non- 
conformist Church  as  I  have  in  my  own.  Although  I  have 
heard  sermons  in  Nonconformist  chapels  that  I  have  pre- 
ferred to  most  I  hear  in  the  Abbey,  yet  I  have  also 
heard,  even  from  highly  respected  Nonconformist  ministers, 
sermons  which  showed  me  that  Churchmen  like  myself 
could  only  have  a  place  there  by  claiming  a  wider  tolera- 
tion of  divergence  even  there  than  I  claim  and  possess 
here ;  and  I  think  that  the  long  historical  succession  of 
latitudinarian  Churchmen,  from  Chillingworth  down  to 
Milman,  proves  the  same  thing.  I  have  ventured  to 
throw  out  these  few  remarks,  not  with  the  view  of  eliciting 
an  answer  or  of  persuading  you,  but  only  to  show  that  I 
give  your  kind  arguments  full  weight,  and  that  I  profess 
myself  unconvinced,  not  because  they  have  no  force,  but 
because,  on  the  whole,  the  counter-arguments  seem  to  me 
to  outweigh  them.' 

In  February  1868,  when  Stanley  delivered  his  address  on 
Church  and  State,  the  Irish  Established  Church  had  so  little 
entered  into  his  consideration  that  it  was  not  mentioned. 
Within  the  next  few  months  this  corner  of  the  subject  had 
become  the  ground  on  which  the  whole  question  was  dis- 
cussed. 

On  March  23rd,  1868,  Mr.  Gladstone  laid  on  the  table 
of  the  House  of  Commons  his  resolutions  in  favour  of  the 
disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church.  In  the  subsequent 
discussions  on  the  question  he  obtained  majorities  against 
the  Government,  and  on  May  4th  Mr.  Disraeli  announced 


264 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


that  a  dissolution  would  take  place  in  the  following  autumn. 
Public  meetings  on  either  side  were  organised  in  London 
and  elsewhere,  and  one  was  held  to  protest  against  the  Bill 
at  St.  James's  Hall  on  May  6th,  1868.  Stanley  was  present, 
and  vainly  endeavoured  to  obtain  a  hearing  from  an  excited 
audience.  His  object  was  to  show  that,  from  a  Liberal  point 
of  view,  the  proposed  mode  of  dealing  with  the  Irish  Church 
was  indefensible.  But  on  this,  as  on  three  other  occasions 
of  his  appearance  on  a  public  platform,  he  was  shouted 
down.  His  first  words, '  I  approach  you  as  a  Liberal  of  the 
Liberals,'  gave  the  signal  for  loud  cries  of  '  Turn  him  out ! ' 
'He  is  a  traitor  !'  'He  is  a  Liberal ! '  When,  by  the  efforts 
of  the  chairman,  a  moment's  silence  was  obtained,  he  went 
on  to  say  that  all  the  Liberal  statesmen,  down  to  the  present 
time,  had  been  in  favour  of  concurrent  endowment.  This 
statement  aroused  a  fresh  outbreak  of  clamour,  and  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  who  was  sitting  by  him,  said,  '  You 
have  now  delivered  yourself  of  the  only  two  important 
things  which  you  have  to  say.  Sit  down.'  '  It  was  perfectly 
true,'  added  Stanley  in  telling  the  story,  '  and  I  did  so.' 

In  August  1868  Stanley  visited  Ireland,  in  order  to  study 
the  question  on  the  spot  and  for  himself.  '  As  to  the 
Church  Question,'  he  writes  to  Dr.  Liddell  in  the  following 
October, 

'what  I  learned  was,  I  think,  this  :  (i)  The  almost  unani- 
mous concurrence  of  reasonable  men  in  behalf  of  the  double 
or  triple  endowment ;  (2)  the  generally  pacific  relations  of 
the  two  populations  towards  each  other  ;  (3)  the  vast  extent 
to  which,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
is  all  but  recognised,  and  the  Protestant  Church,  in  the 
West  and  South,  in  many  cases  withdrawn  —  an  important 
consideration,  because  a  few  additional  changes  carried 
out  in  these  two  directions  v/ould  be  merely  a  legalisa- 
tion of  the  status  quo,  and  would  not  be  of  that  revolutionary 
character  which  the  two  contending  English  parties  are 
anxious  to  ascribe  to  the  supposed  necessary  measures  ; 


CHAP.  XXII     'THE  THREE  IRISH  CHURCHES' 


265 


(4)  the  modifying  effect  which  Protestantism  has  exercised 
on  Roman  Catholicism  in  some  points.  The  whole  aspect 
of  the  cultiis  in  the  Churches  is  far  superior  to  what  one 
sees  in  the  Churches  of  Southern  Europe.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  power  of  the  priesthood  is  much  greater.  (5)  The 
Irish  Protestant  clergy  seem  to  me  a  more  reasonable 
body  of  men  than  I  had  anticipated.  The  Bishops  I  thought 
more  accessible  to  argument  than  our  own,  and  I  doubt 
whether  even  Thirlwall  is  intrinsically  an  abler  man  than 
Fitzgerald. 

'  On  the  whole,  therefore,  I  adhere  to  my  view  —  (i)  a 
triple  endowment ;  (2)  a  legal  recognition  of  the  Roman 
Catholics  in  the  South  and  West,  and  of  the  Presbyterians 
in  the  North  ;  (3)  a  reduction  of  the  Church  of  England 
staff  where  it  is  not  needed,  and,  if  necessary,  a  series  of 
Acts  placing  it  on  the  same  legal  basis  as  the  Church  of 
England  in  India. 

'  I  have  not  seen  in  any  of  the  speeches  any  attempt  to 
define  the  word  "disestablishment."  Every  possible  change, 
from  total  destruction  to  the  slightest  modification  of  the 
present  state  of  things,  might  be  included  under  the  phrase, 
so  far  as  it  has  yet  been  interpreted  — surely  as  regards,  at 
least,  the  two  leaders,  a  most  discreditable  confusion  to  have 
introduced  into  the  two  hostile  camps. 

'  I  agree  entirely  with  you  as  to  the  impolicy  of  fore- 
dooming the  Church  of  England.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that,  in  both  countries,  the  principle  of  a  legal  control  of 
the  religious  communities  has  struck  too  deep  to  be  up- 
rooted. No  statesman  will  now  venture  to  destroy  May- 
nooth  or  Oxford,  St.  Patrick's  or  Westminster  Abbey.' 

The  dissolution  had  now  taken  place,  and  the  disestab- 
lishment of  the  Irish  Church  was  the  burning  question  be- 
fore the  electorate.  John  Stuart  Mill  offered  himself  for 
re-election  at  Westminster  as  a  supporter  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
proposals,  and  his  opponent  was  the  late  W.  H.  Smith.  In 
1865,  Stanley  had  written  a  letter  to  the  electors  of  West- 
minster,^^ in  which  he  intimated  that,  though  he  should  take 
no  active  part  in  the  election,  he  should  support  Mill  on 
account  of  his  distinguished  abilities.    He  then  went  on  to 


Published  in  the  Times  of  July  1st,  1865. 


266 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


negative  the  charge  of  atheism  which  during  the  contest 
had  been  directed  against  a  certain  passage  in  Mill's  philo- 
sophical writings.  The  passage  in  question  '  contains,'  he 
says,  '  a  forcible  exposition  of  the  foundation  of  all  true 
religion.  The  substance  of  it  is,  that  God  is  good,  and  that 
we  are  called  upon  to  worship  Him  because  of  His  goodness.' 
In  1868  the  issue  before  the  electorate  was  one  in  which  he 
was  deeply  interested.  Though  nothing  could  be  further 
from  his  wishes  than  to  see  the  Irish  Church  disestablished, 
he  had  formed  the  conclusion  that  some  change  was  nec- 
essary and  inevitable.  In  a  letter  written  from  abroad 
in  November  1868,  Stanley  declared  his  intention  of  con- 
tinuing to  support  the  candidature  of  Mill  '  on  an  occasion 
when  men  of  his  powers  of  mind,  elevation  of  character, 
and  philosophic  culture,  were  especially  needed  in  the 
House  of  Commons.'  He  returned  to  England  to  find,  as 
he  wrote  to  Dr.  Liddell, 

'  Westminster  all  in  a  blaze  about  my  letter  on  Mill.  It  is 
always  hazardous  to  write  anything  intended  for  popular 
use  on  occasions  of  this  kind.    But  I  had  several  reasons. 

'  I  wished  to  make  as  much  as  I  honestly  could  of  my 
adherence  to  the  Liberal  Party,  when  so  much  of  their  re- 
cent course  has  been  to  me  so  extremely  revolting.  I  was 
doubly  glad  to  do  so  when  the  Bishoprics  were  pending.^" 
It  gave  me,  thirdly,  the  opportunity  of  expressing  what 
seems  to  me  the  one  thing  needful  to  say  at  the  present 
moment  about  the  Irish  Church  question  —  its  extreme 
complication,  and  the  need,  for  its  consideration,  of  all 
those  qualities  which  are  exactly  the  reverse  of  those  dis- 
played by  the  leaders  on  the  subject.  But  I  see  that 
electioneering  is  but  one  continual  appeal  to  the  most 
brutal,  unreasoning  stupidity  and  passion.' 

In  his  address  on  'The  Three  Irish  Churches,'  delivered 
at  Sion  College  on  January  28th,  1869,  Stanley  pleads  for 

1'  The  Conservatives  were  still  in  office,  and  on  November  1 2th,  1868,  Mr. 
Disraeli  offered  Dr.  Tait  the  Archbishopric  of  Canterbury,  vacant  by  the 
death  of  Dr.  Longley.  '  The  appointment  of  Tait  to  Canterbury,'  writes 
Stanley  in  this  same  letter,  '  is  a  good  —  it  may  be  a  great  —  event.' 


CHAP.  XXII     '  THE  THREE  IRISH  CHURCHES' 


267 


that  principle  of  '  levelling-up,'  or  of  concurrent  endowment, 
which  he  considered  to  be  the  true  solution  of  the  burning 
question,  and  which  consisted  in  endowing,  and  placing 
under  the  same  State  control,  the  Protestant  Episcopalian, 
Roman  Catholic,  and  Presbyterian  Churches.  His  treat- 
ment of  the  subject  is  in  many  ways  characteristic.  He 
recognises  three  co-existing  elements  in  Irish  ecclesiastical 
life,  each  of  which,  he  argues,  ought  to  be  developed  in  the 
natural  channels  indicated  by  its  own  separate  character- 
istics. Each  must  be  regarded,  he  says,  as  what  it  is  his- 
torically, and  nothing  more.  Each  is  a  National  Church  in 
the  sense  of  representing  a  powerful  nation.  To  the  paci- 
fying, civilising,  controlling,  elevating,  impartial  influence 
of  the  State,  which  in  these  high  matters  had  shown  itself 
more  Christian  than  the  Church,  he  looked  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  a  mutual  truce,  through  which  the  three  Churches 
might  ultimately  exchange  the  narrow,  proselytising,  exclu- 
sive spirit  of  rival  sects  for  the  free,  magnanimous,  imperial 
spirit  of  an  united  Church. 

In  March  1869  he  thus  explains  to  his  cousin,  Louisa 
Stanley,  his  solution  of  the  question  : 

'  My  scheme  for  Ireland  is  very  briefly  told,  and  as  it  is 
what  all  the  great  Whigs  approved  till  February  1868,  and 
still  wish  for  in  their  hearts,  I  have  no  doubt  it  is  right :  — 
(i)  Reduce  the  Irish  Protestant  Church,  which  has  more 
clergy  and  bishops  than  it  needs.  (2)  Let  the  bishops  be 
like  our  bishops  in  India  —  part  of  our  Church,  but,  as 
being  in  a  distant  country,  without  seats  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  (3)  Give  the  surplus  to  the  Roman  Catholics  and 
Presbyterians.  All  this  elaborate  scheme  of  Gladstone's  is 
partly  the  same  thing  very  much  disguised,  and  partly  quite 
unnecessary,  and,  perhaps,  mischievous.  He  leaves  some 
property  to  the  Irish  Church,  and  so  does  not  entirely  dis- 
endow it.  He  leaves  it  in  the  power  of  the  Irish  Church, 
if  it  likes,  to  remain  part  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 
therefore  does  not  disestablish  it.  If  it  is  disestablished,  it 
must  be  by  its  own  act.    He  gives  the  surplus  money  to 


268 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1869 


the  lunatic  asylums,  which  do  not  want  it,  to  get  out  of  the 
difficulty  of  giving  it  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  who  ought 
to  have  it,  but  whom  the  Scotch  and  English  Dissenters 
wish  to  prevent  from  having  it.  Therefore,  as  you  may 
suppose,  I  was  not  much  pleased  by  his  speech,  which  I 
thought  v/onderfuUy  perspicuous,  but  not  eloquent  or  per- 
suasive. I  had  the  advantage  of  hearing  (or  seeing  on 
their  faces)  the  comments  of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  Delano, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge,  and  the  Count  of  Paris,  who  sat  all 
close  round  me. 

*  I  suspect  that  the  Bill  will  undergo  many  modifications 
before  it  reaches  its  completion,  and  I  shall  not  go  into 
shrieks  of  alarm  or  despair  before  that  time  comes.  It  is 
very  fortunate  that  we  have  such  an  excellent  head  as  our 
present  Archbishop.' 

The  pamphlet^®  passed  through  three  editions  in  four 
months.    '  I  could  not  believe,'  wrote  Lord  Dufferin, 

'  that  anyone  could  have  put  together  so  many  brilliant 
and  interesting  pages  on  such  a  subject.  It  is  very 
humiliating  to  us  mere  Irishry  to  find  that,  in  addition  to 
all  other  usurpations,  Saxons  like  you  invade  our  paths, 
and  appropriate  to  yourselves  our  native  fields  of  literature 
in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  no  share  of  them  to  any  of  us,  to 
whom  of  right  they  belong.' 

But  the  principles  which  it  advocated  were  urged  too  late. 
'  Many  thanks,'  writes  Lord  Oranmore  in  February  1869, 

'  for  your  admirably-written,  most  graphic,  and  large-minded 
pamphlet.  I  believe  that,  had  we  a  real  statesman  in  Great 
Britain,  he  might  carry  out  your  views,  and  so  confer  a  last- 
ing blessing  on  the  country.  But  I  fear  no  such  man  exists. 
Each  leader  thinks  of  little  but  how  he  can  gain  a  certain 
number  of  votes.  Here,  the  government  of  the  country  is 
mainly  directed  by  Cardinal  Cullen,  an  extreme  Ultra- 
montane Jesuit ;  and  in  England  and  Scotland  extreme 
changes  are  encouraged  simply  as  each  party  desires  to 
increase  his  parliamentary  support.  Like  American 
steamers,  when  one  goes  ahead,  the  captain  of  the  other 

The  address  was  published  in  pamphlet  form  :  The  Ihree  Irish  Churches. 
London,  1869,  8vo.    Reprinted  in  Essays  on  Church  and  State. 


CHAP.  XXII    'RECONSTRUCTION  OF  IRISH  CHURCH'  269 


sits  on  the  safety-valve.  Your  pamphlet  will  show  to  pos- 
terity that  some  had  larger  and  higher  views ;  now  I  fear 
the  opportunity  will  be  lost  in  party  conflict,  which  in  this 
country  is  quickly  reviving  religious  bigotry  and  strife.' 

Later  in  the  same  year  in  which  the  pamphlet  on  the 
Irish  Church  was  published  he  contributed  to  the  '  Quar- 
terly Review '  an  article  on  the  '  Reconstruction  of  the 
Irish  Church.' During  the  interval  that  elapsed  between 
January  and  October  1869^*'  the  Irish  Church  Act  had  been 
passed,  and,  as  Archbishop  Tait  notes  in  his  Diary '  a  great 
occasion  has  been  poorly  used,  and  the  Irish  Church  has 
been  greatly  injured,  without  any  benefit  to  the  Roman 
Catholics.'  In  Stanley's  article  on  '  The  Reconstruction  of 
the  Irish  Church '  he  pursues  the  same  line  of  reasoning 
which  he  had  followed  in  his  address.  The  opportunity  of 
securing  to  the  three  National  Churches  of  Ireland  the  ad- 
vantages of  establishment  was  indeed  lost ;  but  it  was  not 
too  late  to  secure  some,  at  least,  of  those  advantages  for  the 
Irish  Church.  Whatever  'disestablishment'  meant,  it  did 
not  mean  the  total  abolition  of  the  institution,  nor  yet  the 
removal  of  all  legal  privileges,  nor  yet  the  entire  separation 
from  the  State,  nor  absolute  freedom  of  clerical  self-govern- 
ment, nor  total  dissolution  of  ecclesiastical  corporations. 
He  therefore  urges  on  the  Irish  Church  the  wisdom  of  '  a 
wise  re-establishment,'  and,  above  all,  '  the  declaration  that 
it  still  formed  part  of  the  Church  of  England,  bound  by  its 
laws,  and  adhering  to  its  doctrine  and  worship.'  However 
tempting  might  be  the  opportunity  of  starting  avowedly 
on  a  fresh  basis,  of  choosing  a  new  ritual  and  a  new  creed, 
of  framing  for  itself  new  formularies,  the  result  of  such  a 

Quarterly  Revierv,  October  1869.  Reprinted  in  an  abridged  form  in 
Essays  on  Church  and  Stale. 

In  April  1869  he  wrote  an  article  for  the  Quarterly  Review  on  'Travels 
in  Greece,'  and  in  October  1869  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  on  'The 
CEcumenical  Council.' 

''■^  Life  of  Archbishop  Tait,  vol.  ii.  p.  42. 


270 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1 870-72 


course  must  inevitably  be  the  sacrifice  of  hereditary  and 
traditionary  influences,  the  loss  of  the  connection  with  the 
law  and  civilisation  of  England,  the  descent  into  the  heated 
atmosphere  of  sectarian  polemics  and  aggressive  proselyt- 
ism.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Irish  Church  elected  to 
remain  a  part  of  the  old,  established.  Imperial  Church,  its 
clergy  might  still  continue  to  be,  what  the  Establishment 
had  secured  their  being  — 

'  an  ecclesiastical  body,  following  the  movement  of  the  na- 
tional mind,  representing  the  cause  of  law  and  order,  the 
destined  instrument  of  civilisation  and  progress ;  not  the 
slave  of  a  tyrannical  majority,  or  a  despotic  priesthood,  or 
a  party  faction ;  a  body  capable  of  holding  its  own  moder- 
ating, elevating  course,  without  pandering  to  the  passions 
or  the  prejudices  of  the  people  by  whom  it  is  maintained,  or 
the  clergy  by  whom  it  is  ruled.' 

During  the  years  1870  and  1872  Stanley  was  necessarily 
much  occupied  with  his  official  duties  as  Dean  of  West- 
minster. He  was  also  conducting  a  voluminous  correspond- 
ence, preaching  frequently  in  the  Abbey  and  elsewhere, 
taking  a  prominent  part  in  the  struggles  in  Convocation, 
serving  •  regularly  on  the  Ritual  Commission  and  on  the 
Committee  for  the  Revision  of  the  Authorised  Version  of 
the  Bible,  and  spending  his  vacations  in  visits  to  friends  in 
England,  Scotland,  or  the  Continent,  or  in  attendance  at 
the  Old  Catholic  Congress  at  Cologne,  or  in  explorations 
of  the  battlefields  of  the  recent  war  between  France  and 
Germany.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  occupations  and  in- 
terests, his  pen  continued  active.  The  following  list  of  his 
most  important  publications  conveys  some  idea  of  his  in- 
exhaustible energy.  He  wrote  articles  in  the  '  Edinburgh  '  ^ 
and  '  Contemporary  ''^  Reviews  on  a  variety  of  subjects.  His 

22  Edinburgh  Review :  'The  Pope  and  the  Council,'  July  1871;  the  'Ben- 
nett Judgment,'  July  1872. 

2^  Contemporary  Review :    '  The  Athanasian  Creed,'  August  1870  and 


CHAP.  XXII    'LECTURES  ON  SCOTTISH  CHURCH'  2yi 


letters  to  the  '  Times '  dealt  with  St.  Bartholomew's  Day, 
the  Old  Catholics,  and  the  Athanasian  Creed.  He  lectured 
on  '  The  Early  Christianity  of  Northumbria  '  2*  ;  he  prepared 
an  elaborate  paper  on  the  Roman  Sarcophagus  recently 
discovered  at  Westminster.  In  1870  he  published  his 
'  Essays  on  Church  and  State.'  ^  In  telling  Professor  Jowett 
of  his  intention  to  collect  and  republish  these  articles, 
addresses,  and  speeches,  he  says,  '  All  that  I  am  really 
anxious  for,  as  far  as  I  am  personally  concerned,  is  that  I 
should  not  be  misunderstood.'  'It  is  not,'  he  writes  to  his 
cousin,  '  a  volume  to  which  I  am  much  attached.  But  I 
trust  that  by  degrees  it  will  form  a  soil  for  the  peaceful 
olive,  the  sustaining  corn,  the  cheering  vine.'  In  1871  he 
wrote  an  introduction  to  the  volume  of  Captain  (now  Sir 
Charles)  Wilson  on  the  '  Recovery  of  Jerusalem,'  ^  and  a 
preface  to  the  'Facsimile  of  the  Prayer  Book  of  1639.'^'^ 
In  1872  he  contributed  to  'Good  Words'^  a  paper  on 
Richard  Hooker,  wrote  a  preface  to  the  '  Letters  and 
Journals  of  the  Earl  of  Elgin,'  and  delivered  before  the 
Philosophical  Institution  of  Edinburgh  his  '  Lectures  on 
the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,' and  in  the  City 
Hall  of  Glasgow  his  two  addresses  on  the  Early  Christians. 

The  '  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land, were  so  important  and  characteristic  a  work  that  they 
deserve  and  demand  detailed  notice.    They  were  preluded 

November  1870;  'Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen,'  May  1870;  *  Dean  Alford,' 
March  1871 ;  '  Disestal^lishment,'  May  1871 ;  '  The  Eighth  Article,'  April  1872. 

2*  The  Early  Christianity  of  Northumbria.    London,  1871,  8vo. 
Essays  on  Church  and  State.    London,  1870,  8vo. 

'^^  The  Recovery  of  Jerusalem.  By  Captain  C.  W.Wilson,  R.  E.  London, 
1871,  8vo. 

2'  Facsimile  of  the  Black-letter  Prayer  Book  of  London,  1 87 1,  fol. 

28  Good  Words,  November  1872. 

Letters  and  yournals  of  the  Earl  of  Elgin.    London,  1872,  8vo. 
•'^  Published  in  the  same  year  as  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland.    London,  1872,  8vo. 


272 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


by  the  first  sermon  that  he  ever  delivered  in  a  Presbyterian 
church.  On  the  Sunday  before  the  first  lecture  (January 
7th,  1872)  he  preached  in  the  Old  Greyfriars'  Church,  at 
Edinburgh.  In  the  autumn  of  the  previous  year  the 
Archbishop  of  York  and  the  Bishop  of  Winchester 
(S.  Wilberforce)  had  preached  in  the  Presbyterian  church 
at  Glengarry.  The  act  provoked  a  storm  of  indignation 
which  caused  both  prelates  to  draw  back,  and  excuse  them- 
selves on  the  plea  that  they  had  only  preached  as  a 
mission.  '  You  will  see,'  said  Archbishop  Tait  to  one  of 
his  friends,  '  that  the  consequence  of  this  will  be  that  Stan- 
ley will  preach  at  Greyfriars'.'  '  I  had  always  intended,' 
writes  Stanley  to  his  sister  Mary,  '  if  ever  I  did  preach  in 
a  Presbyterian  church,  to  preach  there.  I  had  also  long 
ago  fixed  on  my  text  (John  xiii.  34),^^  in  order  to  bring  in 
that  story  of  Archbishop  Ussher.' 

The  story  to  which  he  refers  is  thus  told.  In  the 
seventeenth  century  the  minister  of  Anwoth,  on  the  shores 
of  Galloway,  was  the  famous  Samuel  Rutherford,  the  great 
religious  oracle  of  the  Covenanters. 

'  It  is  one  of  the  traditions  cherished  on  the  spot,  that 
on  a  Saturday  evening,  at  one  of  those  family  gatherings 
whence,  in  the  language  of  a  great  Scottish  poet, 

Old  Scotia's  grandeur  springs, 

when  Rutherford  was  catechising  his  children  and  servants, 
a  stranger  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  Manse,  and  (like 
the  young  English  traveller  in  the  celebrated  romance 
which  has  given  fresh  life  to  those  same  hills  in  our  own 
age),  begged  shelter  for  the  night.  The  minister  kindly 
received  him,  and  asked  him  to  take  his  place  amongst  the 
family  and  assist  at  their  religious  exercises.  It  so  hap- 
pened that  the  question  in  the  Catechism  which  came  to 
the  stranger's  turn  was  that  which  asks,  "  How  many 
Commandments  are  there.'*"    He  answered,  "Eleven." 

'1  '  A  new  commandment  I  give  unto  you.'  The  sermon  is  prefixed  to  the 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland.    London,  1879,  8vo. 


CHAP.  XXII    ^LECTURES  ON  SCOTTISH  CHURCH'  273 


"  Eleven  !,"  exclaimed  Rutherford  ;  "  I  am  surprised  that  a 
person  of  your  age  and  appearance  should  not  know  better. 
What  do  you  mean  }  "  And  he  answered,  "  A  new  com- 
mandment I  give  unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another ;  as 
I  have  loved  you,  that  ye  also  love  one  another.  By  this 
shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  My  disciples,  if  ye  have 
love  one  to  another."  ' 

The  stranger  proved  to  be  '  the  great  divine  and  scholar, 
Archbishop  Ussher,  the  Primate  of  the  Church  of  Ireland.' 
In  telling  this  anecdote,  and  in  commenting  on  this  eleventh 
Commandment,  Stanley  points  out  that  it  is  a  new  com- 
mand so  far  as  it  gives  a  paramount  place  to  the  force  of 
the  human  affections.  'V/e  are,'  he  says,  'to  love  one  an- 
other by  making  the  best  of  one  another ;  by  seeing,  as  far 
as  we  can,  their  better  side. 

He  that  will  live  in  peace  and  rest 
Must  see,  and  hear,  and  say  the  best.' 

He  goes  on  to  apply  the  command  to  the  divisions  of 
Churches.  This  love,  he  says,  '  consists  in  a  better  under- 
standing, a  better  appreciation  of  the  peculiar  spirit  of  every 
Church ;  in  recognising  the  inward  resemblance  which 
exists  under  outward  divergence  ' ;  it  consists,  further,  in  a 
'larger  and  deeper  theology';  it  consists,  finally,  in  'the 
union  of  Christian  Churches  for  great  objects,'  'in  working 
together  for  public  good,'  in  '  a  loyal  and  universal  en- 
thusiasm on  behalf  of  the  great  principles  of  truth,  justice, 
and  beneficence,  which  are  the  true  objects  of  the  devotion 
of  Christendom.' 

In  the  spirit  of  this  sermon  the  lectures  were  delivered 
on  the  8th,  9th,  nth,  and  12th  of  January,  1872.  He 
approaches  his  subject  from  a  special  point  of  view,  and 
with  a  particular  purpose.  His  object  is  to  vindicate  the 
value  of  a  National  Church,  and  of  the  attitude  of  those 
moderate  men  within  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland 
VOL.  II  T 


274 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


who  endeavoured,  in  the  past  or  the  present,  to  broaden  its 
basis,  to  moderate  the  Calvinistic  and  Covenanting  fervour 
of  Presbyterianism  into  a  tempered  rehgious  enthusiasm,  to 
graft  on  its  characteristic  virtues  that  cathoUcity,  elasticity, 
variety,  and  sympathetic  adaptation  which  found  Httle 
room  in  its  fiery,  though  contracted,  heart.  So  prominently 
does  he  keep  his  object  in  view  that  he  unduly  emphasises 
some  features,  ignores  others,  and  mars  the  historical 
accuracy  of  his  picture  as  a  whole.  No  one  could  hope  to 
give  a  complete  history  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  the 
compass  of  four  lectures.  But  it  was  the  obvious  purpose 
of  his  addresses  which  aroused  the  hostile  criticism  of  those 
who  differed  from  him,  and  gave  him  reason  to  appreci- 
ate the  truth  of  the  motto  belonging  to  the  ecclesiastical 
thistle.  Nemo  me  impune  lacessit. 

Yet  Stanley  was  in  the  main  justified  in  his  view  of  the 
Church  history  of  Scotland.  He  rightly  recognised  that 
Buckle's  picture  of  Scottish  religious  and  ecclesiastial 
character  was  overcharged,  and  that  it  was  painted  in  an 
untruthful  monotony  of  fanatical  and  superstitious  gloom. 
He  traced  back  the  growth  of  the  moderate  movement  to 
the  original  constitution  and  character  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland.  He  held  that  the  Established  Church,  even  in 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  was  never  without 
its  witnesses  to  the  virtues  of  a  rational  and  liberal  attitude, 
both  of  thought  and  policy.  He  maintained  that  its  history 
was  not  entirely  black  with  the  shadow  of  the  Covenant, 
or  only  lighted  with  the  fierce  and  lurid  glare  of  fanaticism. 
Throughout  its  whole  existence  —  from  John  Knox  to  the 
present  day — he  found  that  the  softer  and  more  harmonious 
tones  of  saintly  charity,  and  reasonable  faith,  and  hope- 
ful aspiration,  were  blended  with  the  excesses  of  a  harsher 
and  more  violent  colouring.  He  found  these  gentler  hghts 
in  the  polished  culture  of  Buchanan,  in  the  tolerant  for- 


CHAP.  XXII    'LECTURES  ON  SCOTTISH  CHURCH'  275 


bearance  of  the  Regent  Murray,  in  the  enlarged  views  and 
philosophic  Christianity  of  men  of  the  type  of  Henry  Mor- 
ton in  '  Old  Mortality,'  in  the  '  statesmanlike  and  Christian- 
like policy '  of  a  Patrick  Forbes,  in  the  character  of  that 
'  most  Apostolical  of  Presbyterians,'  Archbishop  Leighton, 
who,  in  his  indifference  to  mere  forms  of  Church  govern- 
ment, and  his  intense  desire  for  union,  struck  the  two 
essential  notes  of  moderation.  At  the  Revolution,  the  same 
liberality  of  thought,  mingling  with  the  old  leaven  of  the 
Calvinistic  Covenanting  system,  showed  itself  in  the  kindly 
feeling  and  fine  good-humour  of  William  Carstairs,  the 
trusted  adviser  of  William  III.,  and  the  second  founder 
of  the  Presbyterian  Church.  Throughout  the  eighteenth 
century  he  traced  the  same  enlarged,  enlightened  tempera- 
ment in  men  like  Robertson  or  Blair,  in  Principal  Wishart 
or  Professor  Leechman,  in  the  *  latitudinarian,  moderate, 
Christian-minded  Gillespie '  of  Carnock,  the  founder  of  the 
schism  called  Tlie  Relief. 

In  the  Scotland  of  the  present  day,  in  spite  of  its  dis- 
cordant elements,  he  found  that  growth  of  a  larger  religion 
and  those  germs  of  union  which  he  saw  at  work  elsewhere. 
He  traced  their  promise  in  the  singular  identity  of  outward 
doctrine  and  ritual  which  pervaded  the  three  estranged 
sections  of  Scottish  religious  life.  He  discovered  their  signs 
in  the  elements  of  religious  life  which  are  above  institu- 
tions and  beyond  parties,  in  the  antiquarian  and  mediaeval 
revival,  in  the  larger  liberality  and  greater  moderation  of 
rival  communions,  in  the  intellectual  unity  of  educated 
men,  in  the  decline  of  party  spirit  in  religion,  in  the  wide 
influence  of  religious  teachers  who,  like  Walter  Scott  or 
Robert  Burns,  represent  the  romantic,  moderate,  indepen- 
dent characteristics  of  the  Scottish  Church. 

Finally,  he  asks  the  question.  What  institution  most 
nearly  corresponds  to  these  aspirations  after  unity,  and  to 


2/6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


the  idea  of  that  invisible  spiritual  Church,  which  is  without 
a  name,  but  '  of  which  the  members  recognise  each  other 
wherever  they  meet?  '^^  He  answers  his  own  question  by 
claiming  the  distinction  for  the  Established  Church.  '  It 
alone,'  he  urges,  '  carries,  like  the  prophet  Amphiaraus,  a 
"blank  shield  with  no  device  of  sect  or  party."  '  It  bears 
no  device  of  party,  but  treats  parties  as  '  in  themselves 
mere  accidents.'  It  alone  has  been  the  means  of  shelter- 
ing '  the  intelligence  without  which  devotion  dwindles  into 
fanaticism,  and  the  charity  and  moderation  without  which 
the  most  ardent  zeal  profits  nothing.'  It  appeals  to  Scot- 
land by  its  historical  associations,  its  Presbyterian  char- 
acter, its  relations  to  the  seceding  Churches,  and,  above 
all,  by  its  vitality.    '  It  is  the  glory,'  he  says, 

'  of  the  Free  Church  that  it  maintained  itself  on  the  strength 
of  a  single  abstract  principle,  by  the  sheer  force  of  self- 
denying  energy,  and  of  a  bold  appeal  to  the  religious 
scruples  of  a  narrow  conscience.  It  is  the  still  greater  glory 
of  the  Established  Church  that  it  maintained  itself,  in  spite 
of  the  loss  of  many  of  its  most  zealous  ministers,  by  the 
strength  of  its  ancient  traditions,  by  its  firm  conviction  of 
right,  and  by  its  promise  of  a  glorious  future ;  that  it  has 
received  new  life  into  its  ranks  ;  that  it  has  had  the  courage 
to  repent  of  its  former  errors  ;  that  it  has  become  the  centre 
of  hopes  and  aspirations  unknown  to  its  own  former  exist- 
ence, or  to  the  communions  which  have  divided  from  it. 
The  very  word  "  residuary,"  used  against  it  as  a  reproach, 
was,  and  is,  its  best  title  of  honour.  Churches  and  seces- 
sions which  build  themselves  on  particular  dogmas  are  not 
residuary;  they  gather  to  them  many  of  the  most  ardent 
and  energetic,  but  they  gather  also  the  fierce  partisans  and 
the  narrow  proselytisers,  and  they  leave  out  of  sight  those 
who  are  unable  or  unwilling  to  follow  the  leaders  of  ex- 
tremes. But  Churches  which  are  founded  on  no  such 
special  principles,  which  have  their  reason  of  existence 
simply  because  they  profess  in  its  most  general  aspect  the 
form  of  Christianity  most  suitable  to  the  age  or  country  in 

82  Prevost  Paradol's  Edinburgh  Lectures,  quoted  by  Stanley  in  The  Church 
of  Scotland,  Lecture  IV. 


CHAP.  XXII    'LECTURES  ON  SCOTTISH  CHURCH' 


277 


which  they  live  —  they  are  "residuary"  Churches,  because 
they  gather  into  themselves  the  "residue"  of  the  nation, 
the  simple,  the  poor,  who  are  too  little  instructed  to  under- 
stand the  grounds  which  separate  the  different  Churches ; 
the  refined,  the  thoughtful,  who  understand  them  too  well 
to  care  about  them,  who  care  more  for  the  religious,  moral, 
and  intellectual  life  of  the  people  than  for  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant,  for  Non-Intrusion,  or  for  spiritual 
jurisdiction.' 


2/8  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864-81 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
1864-81 

STANLEY'S  ADMINISTRATION  OF  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  — HIS 
INCAPACITY  FOR  BUSINESS  — HIS  LOVE  AND  CARE  FOR  THE 
BUILDING  — HIS  CHOICE  OF  SELECT  PREACHERS— HIS  OF- 
FER OF  THE  ABBEY  PULPIT  TO  DR.  COLENSO,  1874— MISSION 
LECTURES  IN  THE  NAVE,  1872-9 —BACH'S  PASSION  MUSIC, 
1871-2  — SERVICES  FOR  CHILDREN,  1871-81  —  SATURDAY- 
AFTERNOON  SERVICES,  1881 —DISTINGUISHED  VISITORS  TO 
THE  ABBEY  — THE  CHOIR  OPENED  TO  THE  PUBLIC  GRATUI- 
TOUSLY—PARTIES OF  WORKING-MEN  CONDUCTED  OVER 
WESTMINSTER  — STANLEY'S  GUTS  AS  A  PREACHER— INTER- 
MENTS IN  THE  ABBEY,  1864-81  —  FUNERAL  OF  CHARLES 
DICKENS,  1870— PROPOSED  MONUMENT  TO  THE  PRINCE 
IMPERIAL,  1879-80 

In  his  official  guardianship  of  Westminster  Abbey  Stanley 
was  inspired  by  the  same  ideals  and  animated  by  the  same 
enthusiasms  which  gave  such  force  to  his  speeches  in  Con- 
vocation and  such  freshness  to  his  varied  literary  work. 

The  Abbey  was,  to  his  eyes,  the  material  embodiment 
of  his  ideal  of  a  comprehensive  National  Church,  the  out- 
ward symbol  of  the  harmonious  unity  in  diversity  which 
pervades  the  English  Commonwealth,  a  monument  reared 
in  stone  to  that  intimate  union  of  Church  and  State  out  of 
which  the  English  Constitution  has  been  evolved.  To  him 
it  was  a  dumb,  yet  eloquent,  preacher  of  the  sanctity  of 
every  form  of  healthy  national  life,  a  powerful,  though 
silent,  witness  to  the  identity  of  secular  and  ecclesiastical 
realities.  To  him,  again,  the  strange,  irregular  conjunction 
of  tombs  which  had  gradually  gathered  within  this  '  temple 


CHAP.  XXIII 


WESTMINSTER  ABBEY 


279 


of  silence  and  reconciliation '  taught,  not  only  the  wise  tol- 
eration of  Death,  but  the  all-embracing  sympathies  of  the 
religion  of  the  true  Church  of  England.  Thus,  within  the 
consecrated  walls  and  precincts  of  the  Abbey  he  found  the 
visible  expression  of  the  aim  which  he  steadfastly  pursued 
as  Dean,  and  which  he  described  as  the  effort  to  make  the 
Abbey  '  more  and  more  the  centre  of  religious  and  national 
life  in  a  truly  liberal  spirit.' 

He  rejoiced  to  think  that  at  the  moment  of  its  founda- 
tion the  Abbey  became  at  once  the  centre  of  a  new  relig- 
ious and  political  world,  and  that  from  that  time  forward  it 
had  kept  its  hold  on  the  reverence  of  the  English  people 
with  a  tenacity  unequalled  by  any  other  building.  It  had 
been  at  once  the  seat  of  royalty  and  the  cradle  of  liberty. 
In  the  coronation  of  every  sovereign  from  the  Conquest 
downwards  it  witnessed  each  successive  stage  in  the  his- 
tory o{  the  English  Monarchy.  By  the  home  which  its 
Chapter  House  for  three  centuries  had  given  to  the  House 
of  Commons  it  witnessed  also  the  parallel  growth  of  Eng- 
lish constitutional  freedom.  In  its  structure  were  repre- 
sented the  three  great  architectural  epochs  of  our  national 
buildings.  Its  pavements  or  its  walls  enshrined  the  for- 
tunes, in  life  or  death,  of  royal  dynasties,  embraced  the 
memories  of  illustrious  persons  of  diversified  genius,  per- 
petuated the  records  of  varying  forms  of  worship,  of  chang- 
ing phases  of  theological  thought,  of  conflicting  acts  of 
reverential  devotion.  It  was  a  chronicle  written  in  stone  of 
the  history,  the  constitution,  the  glories,  the  growth  of  the 
English  nation.  It  was  also  a  moving  commentary  on  the 
words  of  St.  Jerome,  '  Vox  quidem  dissona  sed  una  religio,' 
and  an  unique  representative  of  the  varieties  of  the  creeds 
of  the  nation,  its  worship,  its  sects  and  parties,  its  interests 
and  pursuits,  embracing  the  greatest  possible  range  within 
religious  limits,  and  gathering  beneath  one  consecrated  roof 


28o 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


every  form  of  human  activity,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  relig- 
ious and  secular.  Here,  side  by  side,  lay  not  only  those 
who  in  life  were  separated  by  political,  literary,  or  military 
jealousies,  but  English,  French,  and  German  worthies, 
sceptics  and  believers,  Protestants  and  Roman  Catholics, 
Churchmen  and  Nonconformists. 

'  So  long  as  Westminster  Abbey  maintains  its  hold  on  the 
affections  or  respect  of  the  English  Church  and  nation,  so 
long  will  it  remain  a  standing  proof  that  there  is  in  the  tru- 
est feeling  of  human  nature,  and  in  the  highest  aspirations  of 
religion,  something  deeper  and  wider  than  the  partial  judg- 
ments of  the  day  and  the  technical  distinctions  of  sects.'  ^ 

To  all  these  august  associations  Stanley  responded 
with  the  instinct  of  genius.  He  rose  to  the  exigencies  of 
a  position  which  appealed  forcibly  to  his  own  ideals, 
character,  and  sympathies.  He  felt  in  every  fibre  the  in- 
spiring force  of  the  place  which  he  had  been  chosen  to 
occupy.  Though  at  first  depressed  by  the  burden  of  busi- 
ness details,  he  threw  himself  with  such  eagerness  into  the 
congenial  portions  of  his  work  that  his  mind  and  heart 
became  absorbed  in  the  interests  and  opportunities  sup- 
plied by  the  Abbey.  Goldsmith's  Chinese  philosopher 
wondered  that  the  custody  of  the  national  temple  was 
confided  to  'a  college  of  priests.'  But,  whatever  were 
Stanley's  weaknesses,  they  were  not  those  infirmities  of 
the  ecclesiastical  profession  to  which  the  Oriental  sage 
referred. 

To  open  the  Abbey  pulpit  to  Churchmen  of  every  shade 
of  religious  opinion,  to  give  to  laymen  or  to  clergymen 
of  other  communions  the  opportunity  of  speaking  within 
its  walls,  to  make  known  its  treasures  to  the  world,  to 
interest  in  its  monuments  and  services  every  class  of  his 

^  '  On  Westminster  Abbey.'  A  paper  read  before  the  Royal  Institution  of 
Great  Britain  on  Friday,  April  27th,  1866,  by  A.  P.  Stanley. 


CHAP.  XXIII    STANLEY'S  LOVE  OF  THE  ABBEY         28 1 


countrymen,  became  some  of  the  chief  objects  of  his  life. 
Six  years  before  his  appointment  to  the  Deanery  he  had 
conducted  Michael  Sukatin,  his  Russian  friend,  over  the 
Abbey,  which  he  then  described  as  '  extremely  difficult  to 
lionise.'  The  difficulty  was  soon  overcome.  He  became, 
as  it  were,  the  soul  of  the  Abbey.  To  follow  him  through 
its  chapels  and  transepts  was  to  follow  a  '  Christian  Plu- 
tarch.' His  presence,  as  he  drew  out  the  tale  imprisoned 
in  the  silent  stones,  and  made  each  sepulchre  surrender  its 
dead,  gave  to  its  walls  and  monuments  life  and  speech 
and  motion.  From  the  buried  stones  of  the  original  Abbey 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  to  the  last  addition  made  by  him- 
self, all  told  the  tale  of  continuous  national  history.  In 
dealing  with  the  Bible  he  had  endeavoured  to  make  it  a 
living  book,  that  so  it  might  the  more  readily  become  a 
Book  of  Life.  In  the  same  spirit,  both  with  voice  and  pen, 
he  laboured  to  reanimate  the  inheritance  of  the  past,  to 
make  the  Abbey  an  eloquent  memorial  of  all  that  was 
greatest  and  most  famous  in  national  history,  to  keep  alive 
its  power  as  the  incentive  to  heroic  action,  to  appeal,  through 
its  splendid  associations  with  the  past,  not  only  to  the  care 
but  to  the  emulation  of  the  present.  Nor  was  it  merely  with 
the  past  history  of  England  that  he  linked  the  present  life  of 
the  nation.  In  and  through  the  Abbey  both  were  raised 
to  a  higher  level,  connected  with  the  history  of  the  Bible,  and 
leavened  with  the  Divine  principles  that  permeate,  not  only 
the  sacred  narrative,  but  the  questions  and  interests  which 
absorbed  the  nineteenth  century.  On  the  north  side  of 
the  altar  in  the  Abbey  is  a  statue  representing  Moses,  and 
looking  towards  the  transept  which  contains  the  tombs  of 
statesmen  ;  at  the  south  side  is  another  statue,  representing 
David,  and  looking  towards  the  Poets'  Corner.  The  erec- 
tion of  these  figures  was  Stanley's  one  piece  of  ritualism, 
and  the  close  connection  between  past  and  present  which 


282 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


they  symbolised  was  a  feeling  seldom  absent  from  his 
mind. 

The  general  ideal  which  guided  Stanley  in  his  adminis- 
tration of  Westminster  Abbey  was  not  more  congenial  to 
his  own  tastes,  temperament,  and  tone  of  thought  than  it 
was,  as  he  believed,  congenial  to  the  spirit  of  the  Abbey 
itself,  to  its  history,  its  associations,  and  the  best  traditions 
of  his  predecessors.  In  writing  its  memorials,  in  choosing 
the  preachers  to  occupy  its  pulpit,  in  introducing  mission- 
lectures  and  orchestral  performances,  in  inaugurating 
services  for  children,  in  the  subjects  and  substance  of  his 
own  sermons,  in  his  care  and  love  for  the  structure,  in  open- 
ing the  Abbey  as  a  place  of  interment  to  men  of  distinction, 
in  guiding  parties  of  sightseers  over  its  buildings,  he  was 
ever  actuated  by  the  desire  to  make  Westminster,  in  the 
widest  sense  of  the  word,  the  centre  and  the  representative 
of  the  highest  aspects  of  religious  and  national  life. 

There  were,  indeed,  practical  points  arising  out  of  the 
administration  of  its  affairs  with  which  he  was  scarcely 
competent  to  deal.  A  Dean  possessed  of  greater  financial 
capacity  would  undoubtedly  have  arranged  far  better  terms 
for  the  Abbey  when  its  property  was  transferred  to  the 
Ecclesiastical  Commissioners.  A  Dean  more  qualified  to 
deal  with  practical  details  of  business  would  not  have  al- 
lowed Westminster  School  to  become  possessed  of  a  portion 
of  the  Abbey  property,  the  loss  of  which  clouded  and  em- 
bittered the  last  few  months  of  his  life.  In  such  questions 
Stanley  found  it  impossible  to  take  an  interest,  and  his  real 
ignorance  of  money  matters  made  him  timorous.  He 
never  mastered  arithmetic,  and  though,  when  at  Rugby,  he 
considered  himself '  not  so  very  bad  an  accountant,'  he  never 
quite  appreciated  the  difference  between  eighteen-pence 
and  one-and-eightpence.  In  this  same  connection  Mr. 
Locker-Lampson  relates  of  him  a  characteristic  story  : 


CHAP.  XXIII      HIS  BUSINESS  INCAPACITY 


283 


'  I  was  telling  him  that  musician  Halle's  cook  had  lately 
won  a  good  round  sum  of  money  in  a  lottery  with  the 
number  23.  Halle  was  interested,  and  asked  her  how  she 
came  to  fix  on  so  lucky  a  number.  "  Oh  !  sir,"  said  she, 
"  I  had  a  dream.  I  dreamt  of  number  seven,  I  dreamt 
of  it  three  times,  and  as  three  times  seven  makes  twenty- 
three,  I  chose  that  number,  sir."  When  I  had  concluded 
my  story  I  observed  a  wistful  expression  on  Arthur's 
countenance,  as  if  he  were  ready,  nay  anxious,  to  be 
amused,  but  could  not  for  the  life  of  him  quite  manage  it. 
Then  suddenly  his  face  brightened,  and  he  said,  but  not 
without  a  tinge  of  dejection,  "Ah,  yes,  I  see;  yes,  I  sup- 
pose three  times  seven  is  7iot  twenty-three."  ' 

Stanley's  ignorance  of  finance  and  incapacity  for  busi- 
ness undoubtedly  marred  the  completeness  of  his  effi- 
ciency as  Dean  of  Westminster.  His  want  of  architectural 
knowledge  also  contributed,  as,  half  in  jest,  half  in  earnest, 
he  was  fond  of  saying,  to  make  him  unfit  for  his  posi- 
tion. But  this  defect,  at  least,  was  more  than  compen- 
sated by  his  enthusiasm  and  love  for  the  building  and  its 
contents. 

No  part  of  the  Abbey  or  its  precincts  escaped  his  keen 
historical  curiosity,  and  there  was  hardly  any  corner  on 
which  his  investigations  did  not  throw  new  light.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  enumerate  in  detail  all  the  traces  which 
he  left  behind  him  of  his  love  for  the  building  of  which  he 
was  the  official  guardian  :  the  various  rearrangements  of 
the  monuments,  each  stage  in  which  involved  him  in  a  mass 
of  voluminous  correspondence ;  the  removal  of  the  black 
incrustations  that  defaced  the  glories  of  tombs  like  those 
of  Margaret  Beaufort,  and  Henry  VH.  and  his  Queen, 
Elizabeth  of  York ;  the  careful  restoration  of  the  picture 
of  Richard  H.  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  ;  the  examination 
and  cataloguing  of  the  documents  in  the  muniment  room; 
the  erection  of  new  painted  windows  such  as  those  to 
Chaucer,  to  Cowper,  and  to  George  Herbert ;  the  addition 


284 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


of  monuments  to  the  memory  of  worthies  such  as  Outram, 
the  Bayard  of  India,  John  Keble,  and  John  and  Charles 
Wesley.  In  allowing  a  monument  to  be  erected  to  the 
Wesleys  Stanley  was  pursuing  a  precedent  already  estab- 
lished in  Westminster  Abbey,  a  precedent  which  he  was 
careful  to  emphasise  by  the  choice  of  the  site.  'About 
eight  or  ten  years  ago,'  wrote  Stanley  in  1878, 

'the  President  of  the  Wesleyan  Conference  asked  if  I  would 
allow  the  erection  of  a  monument  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
in  Poets'  Corner,  to  Charles  Wesley,  as  the  sweet  Psalmist 
of  our  "  English"  Israel.  I  ventured  to  ask,  "  If  we  are  to 
have  a  monument  to  Charles,  why  not  to  John  "  To  John 
Wesley,  accordingly,  together  with  his  brother  Charles  — 
not  as  excluding  Charles,  but  as  the  greater  genius,  as  the 
greater  spirit  of  the  two — that  monument  has  been  erected.' 

It  is  placed  close  to  the  monument  which,  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, was  erected  to  the  memory  of  the  Congregational 
divine  and  poet,  Isaac  Watts.  To  Stanley  also  was  due 
the  verification  of  many  disputed  points  respecting  the 
spots  where  persons  buried  within  the  Abbey  precincts  lay 
interred.  His  own  interest  in  the  national  burial-ground 
so  largely  depended  on  knowing  the  exact  resting-place  of 
each  illustrious  person,  that  he  was  anxious,  wherever 
doubt  existed,  to  fix  the  precise  locality.  It  was  thus  that 
he  seized  the  opportunity  of  examining  the  tomb  of  Rich- 
ard II.  and  Queen  Anne  of  Bohemia,  in  the  hope  of  deter- 
mining whether  the  murdered  king  was  really  buried  there, 
and  was  disappointed  to  find  no  trace  of  violence  in  the 
human  remains  discovered  within  the  monument.  Thus, 
too,  he  fixed  the  spot  where  lies  the  Parliamentarian  Earl 
of  Essex,  and  found  among  the  royal  monuments  in  Henry 
VI I. 's  Chapel  the  graves  of  Elizabeth  Claypole,  and  prob- 
ably of  General  Worsley,  the  one  the  daughter,  the  other 
the  favourite,  of  the  Protector  Cromwell. 

The  discovery  of  the  spot  in  which  lie,  side  by  side, 


CHAP,  xxin    HIS  CARE  FOR  ABBEY  MONUMENTS  285 


Charles  II.,  Mary  II.,  William  III.,  Queen  Anne,  and 
Prince  George  of  Denmark,  was  an  accident.  But  the 
finding  of  the  coffin  of  James  I.  was  the  reward  of  a 
diligent  search,  which  incidentally  revealed  other  hidden 
historical  treasures.  In  the  course  of  the  explorations  the 
actual  spot  was  ascertained  where  was  buried  the  great 
Duke  of  Argyll,  to  whom  Walter  Scott  has  reared  an  im- 
perishable monument  in  '  The  Heart  of  Midlothian.'  Anne 
of  Denmark,  the  Queen  of  James  I.,  was  found  lying  alone 
in  an  ample  vault,  as  though  waiting  for  her  husband  to  fill 
the  vacant  space ;  the  fragments  of  Torrigiani's  high  altar, 
um^.er  which  Edward  VI.  was  buried,  and  which  was 
destroyed  by  the  Puritans  in  1641,  were  brought  to  light 
and  carefully  collected  ;  Queen  Elizabeth's  coffin,  bearing 
the  deeply-incised  Tudor  rose,  and  also,  as  he  was  de- 
lighted to  tell  the  Queen  in  1878,  the  arms  of  Cyprus,  was 
seen  lying  upon  that  of  her  sister  Mary.  Finally,  in  the 
tomb  of  Henry  VII.  himself  were  discovered  the  missing 
bones  of  James  I.  Writing  in  February  1869  to  James 
Anthony  Froude,  Stanley  thus  announces  the  result  of 
his  search  : 

'After  trying  Edward  VI. 's  vault  in  vain,  we  turned  to 
the  chapel  corresponding  to  that  which  contains  the  body 
of  Anne  of  Denmark,  and  there  found,  not  a  vault,  but 
a  grave,  with  a  very  tall  skeleton  but  no  name ;  and  the 
stature  and  the  absence  of  a  vault  forbade  the  supposition 
of  its  being  James  ;  who  it  can  be  I  cannot  conjecture, 
unless  it  be  General  Worsley,  the  one  Cromvvellian 
general  who  was  not  disinterred.  We  returned  to  the 
head  of  Henry  VII. 's  tomb,  and  there,  after  much  pushing, 
the  wall  suddenly  yielded,  an  aperture  was  found,  and 
there,  in  the  most  majestic  tranquillity,  lay,  side  by  side, 
the  two  dark-grey,  leaden  coffins  of  Henry  VII.  and 
Elizabeth  of  York  —  and  a  shade  newer  and  lighter,  James  I. 
I  need  not  describe  my  thoughts.  The  vault  was  closed 
this  morning,  and  so  the  mystery  is  solved,  and  my  three 
weeks'  intense  interest  and  anxiety  are  over.    It  has  been 


286 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864-81 


more  of  both  to  me  than  an  outside  observer  can  easily 
imagine,  haunting  me  with  agitating  and  magnificent 
visions  both  by  day  and  night.' 

Mr.  George  Scharf,  who  was  present  at  the  opening  of 
the  vault  and  the  discovery  of  the  three  coffins,  describes  the 
scene.  As  soon  as  the  name  of  King  James  was  read,  Stanley 
asked  him  to  go  to  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  where  a  Royal 
Commission  was  sitting,  and  tell  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury and  Lord  Stanhope  that  the  Dean  particularly  desired 
their  presence.  When  they  arrived  at  the  spot  the  Dean, 
who  was  standing  surrounded  by  the  Canons,  the  architect 
of  the  Abbey  (Sir  Gilbert  Scott),  and  several  friends, 

*  made  a  motion  with  his  hands,  as  if  asking  for  space  to  be 
cleared,  and  said  in  his  peculiar  tone  of  short  breath,  "  Stand 
back  !  stand  back !  and  let  the  first  Scottish  archbishop 
look  upon  the  first  Scottish  king  of  England."  ' 

James  I.  was  allowed  to  repose  undisturbed  in  the 
venerable  cavern  which  he  had  chosen  for  his  resting-place. 
The  coffin  of  Lord  Essex  was  replaced  in  the  grave,  and 
the  words  inscribed  upon  it  at  the  time  of  the  Common- 
wealth are  now  written  on  the  slab  which  marks  the  spot 
where  he  lies.  But  Catherine  de  Valois,  the  daughter  of 
the  mad  king  of  France,  the  wife  of  Henry  V.,  the  Kate 
of  Shakespeare,  was  found,  and  removed  to  a  spot  more 
suited  to  be  the  resting-place  of  the  widow  of  an  illustrious 
king.  In  consequence  of  her  second  marriage  with  Owen 
Tudor  she  lived  a  disparaged  life;,  and  at  her  death  re- 
ceived less  than  a  royal  funeral.  After  many  vicissitudes 
of  fortune,  her  coffin  was  removed  for  safety  to  a  remote 
spot  near  the  Percy  vault.  Stanley  had  obtained  the 
Queen's  consent  to  the  transferrence  of  the  remains  to 
the  chapel  erected  over  the  grave  of  Henry  V.,  and  when 
the  first  opportunity  occurred  of  gaining  access  to  the 


CHAP.  XXIII   HIS  DISCOVERIES  AND  RESTORATIONS  287 


Northumberland  vault,  the  neglected  Catherine  de  Valois 
was  reverently  removed  to  her  husband's  chantry. 

In  Westminster  Abbey  as  a  whole,  and  in  its  minutest 
details,  his  life  became  more  and  more  centred.  His  love 
for  the  national  sanctuary  which  had  been  entrusted  to  his 
care  showed  itself  in  a  variety  of  ways  —  in  his  refusal  to 
permit  unnecessary  restorations,  in  his  respect  for  the  mon- 
uments of  every  age  as  parts  of  the  history  of  the  country 
and  of  the  Abbey,  in  his  eagerness  to  make  new  discoveries 
in  or  about  the  building,  in  his  boyish  delight  at  finding  the 
monogram  of  Izaak  Walton  scratched  with  the  angler's 
own  hand  on  the  tomb  of  Isaac  Casaubon,  in  the  labour 
which  he  spent  on  tracing  out  the  story  of  'Jane  Lister  — 
dear  childe,'  in  the  pleasure  with  which  he  brought  from 
Ticonderoga  the  point  of  a  rusty  bayonet  which  had  been 
dug  up  on  the  battlefield,  and  reverently  placed  it  on  the 
tomb  of  Colonel  Townsend.  But  the  two  most  important 
structural  changes  which  commemorate  his  tenure  of  the 
Deanery  were  the  restoration  of  the  Chapter  House  and 
the  completion  of  the  altar  in  the  Abbey  itself. 

While  Stanley  was  Dean  of  Westminster  the  Chapter 
House  was  completely  restored.  He  took  the  keenest 
interest  in  a  work  which  his  predecessor  had  begun. 
The  building  had  long  been  used  as  part  of  the  Record 
Office ;  the  capitals  of  the  pillars  had  been  hacked  away, 
the  tracery  of  the  windows  filled  with  brickwork,  and  an 
upper  floor  inserted,  to  make  the  building  more  commo- 
dious for  the  reception  of  documents.  Stanley  summoned 
meetings  of  antiquarians  and  archaeologists,  forced  the 
subject  of  the  restoration  upon  the  attention  of  the  public, 
and  urged  the  duty  of  carrying  on  the  work  with  such 
tenacity  that  he  obtained  a  grant  from  the  Government  for 
its  completion.  It  was  mainly  through  his  vigour  that  the 
ancient  cradle  of  English  parliamentary  life  was  restored 


288 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


to  its  former  glory,  and  became  one  of  the  archaeological 
and  architectural  triumphs  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
was  also  while  Stanley  was  Dean  that  the  reredos,  the  altar, 
the  sedilia,  and  the  tesselated  pavement  within  the  altar- 
rails  were  completed,  between  the  years  1867  and  1873. 
During  the  erection  of  this  screen  and  its  accompanying 
pavement  two  of  the  piers  of  the  original  building  of 
Edward  the  Confessor  were  discovered  beneath  the  floor. 
If  Stanley  had  enjoyed  no  other  title  to  distinction  than 
his  love  and  care  for  the  building,  he  would  have  left  his 
mark  on  the  ancient  Abbey  as  one  of  the  most  memorable 
in  the  long  line  of  abbots  and  deans  who  have  held  the 
keys  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Peter. 

Delighting  to  treat  the  Abbey  as  '  the  consecrated  tem- 
ple of  reconciled  ecclesiastical  enmities,'  he  endeavoured 
to  induce  men  of  all  shades  of  religious  opinion  to  occupy 
its  pulpit.  To  what  has  been  already  said  of  the  difficulty 
which  he  encountered  from  some  of  the  High  Church 
leaders,  it  only  remains  to  add  that,  after  three  or  four 
applications.  Dr.  Liddon  consented  to  preach.  On  the 
1 8th  of  June,  1876,  he  delivered  what  Stanley  describes 
as  'a  fine  discourse,  with  nothing  of  protest  or  polemics 
involved.' 

Even  in  spite  of  the  refusal  of  the  High  Church  leaders, 
the  list  of  special  preachers  was  fairly  representative.^ 

^  The  special  preachers  for  1864  were  : 

1.  The  Dean  of  Westminster. 

2.  The  Archbishop  of  York  (Dr.  Thomson). 

3.  Dr.  Hugh  Stowell  (Canon  of  Manchester). 

4.  The  Rev.  J.  R.  Woodford  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Ely). 

5.  Dr.  Wordsworth  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Lincoln). 

6.  The  Rev.  A.  Thorold  (now  Bishop  of  Winchester). 

7.  The  Rev.  J.  Rowsell  (now  Canon  of  Westminster). 

8.  The  Rev.  Jas.  Fraser  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Manchester). 

9.  The  Bishop  of  London  (Dr.  Tait). 

10.  The  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice. 

11.  The  Rev.  George  Moberly  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Salisbury). 


CHAP.  XXIII        HIS  CHOICE  OF  PREACHERS 


289 


No  one  party  was  excluded.  But  success  was  only  at- 
tained by  the  exercise  of  much  caution,  tact,  and  tenacity. 
He  was  aware  that  the  Chapter  of  the  Abbey  dreaded  lest 
he  should  nominate  as  special  preachers  those  of  his  Oxford 
friends  whose  names  were  then  obnoxious  to  the  theological 
world.  Professor  Jowett  was,  perhaps,  the  man  on  whom 
public  attention  was  at  that  time  chiefly  fixed.  Stanley 
therefore  determined,  as  a  matter  of  prudence,  not  to 
nominate  him.  It  was  not  till  July  ist,  1866,  that  Professor 
Jowett  preached  in  the  Abbey.  His  sermon,  which  was 
delivered  to  a  vast  congregation,  chiefly  of  men,  was  —  so 
Stanley  wrote  to  Pearson  —  '  truly  characteristic  and  truly 
Christian.'  Though  the  Professor  has,  from  that  time  on- 
ward, annually  preached  in  the  Abbey,  no  formal  remon- 
strance has  ever  been  uttered.  The  only  preachers  whom 
Stanley  had  determined  to  nominate  in  his  first  year  of 
office,  and  whom  the  Chapter  might  be  expected  to  oppose, 
were  Professor  Maurice  and  Dr.  Temple.  In  writing  to 
Maurice  in  April  1864,  Stanley  says  : 

'  I  asked  Pusey,  Liddon,  and  Keble  to  preach,  and  they 
all  declined,  from  believing  that  they  had  no  common 
Christianity  with  those  whom  I  might  be  likely  to  invite 
to  preach  on  other  occasions.  I  hope  that  you,  in  your 
sermon,  will  prove  by  example  that  they  are  wrong.' 

Maurice's  nomination  excited  no  opposition,  and  he 
preached  on  the  5th  of  June,  1864.  Dr.  Temple,  then  Head 
Master  of  Rugby,  was  nominated  in  June  to  preach  on  the 
3rd  of  July,  1864.    The  Chapter,  at  their  ordinary  meeting 

12.  The  Bishop  of  Oxford  (Dr.  Wilberforce). 

13.  The  Dean  of  Chichester  (Dr.  Hook). 

14.  The  Rev.  F.  Temple  (now  Bishop  of  London). 

15.  The  Bishop  of  Ripon  (Dr.  Bickersteth). 

16.  The  Rev.  J.  L.  Claughton  (afterwards  Bishop  of  St.  Alban's). 

17.  The  Rev.  E.  M.  Goulburn  (afterwards  Dean  of  Norwich). 

18.  The  Rev.  H.  Twells  (Head  Master  of  the  Godolphin  Grammar  -School, 
Hammersmith). 

VOL.  n  U 


290 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


in  the  last  week  of  June,  entered  a  formal  protest.  '  You,' 
said  Stanley, 

'  are  acting  entirely  according  to  your  sense  of  duty  in 
doing  as  you  do.  I  am  acting  from  the  same  sense  of 
duty  in  insisting  on  his  name.  You  may  sign  the  protest ; 
but  there  is  one  thing  you  cannot  do,  and  that  is,  make  me 
quarrel  with  you  for  so  doing.' 

The  protest  was  signed,  and  buried  in  the  archives  of 
the  Chapter.  It  was  never  again  heard  of,  though  Dr. 
Temple  frequently  preached  at  the  special  services,  and 
no  opposition  was  ever  afterwards  offered  to  any  of  the 
Dean's  nominations. 

Many  years  later,  and  under  peculiar  circumstances, 
Stanley's  offer  of  the  pulpit  of  Westminster  Abbey  was 
declined.  In  1874  the  Bishop  of  Natal  visited  England  for 
the  purpose  of  pleading  the  cause  of  Langalbalele,  a  South 
African  chief  who  had  been,  in  his  opinion,  grievously 
wronged  by  the  Colonial  Government.  He  had  come,  at 
'  the  sacrifice  of  his  dearest  prospects,  and  of  valuable 
friendships,  cemented  by  the  most  trying  circumstances,'  in 
order  to  render  justice  to  an  unfortunate  savage  ;  and  his 
conduct  in  the  particular  matter  to  which  his  visit  referred 
received  the  approval  of  the  highest  authorities  at  the  Co- 
lonial Office.  Dr.  Colenso's  magnanimous  action  strongly 
appealed  to  the  sympathies  of  Stanley.  On  the  Bishop's 
previous  visit  to  England  he  had  not  offered  Dr.  Colenso 
the  opportunity  of  preaching  in  the  Abbey,  because  he  con- 
sidered that  'prudence  enjoined  abstinence  from  a  course 
which  would  have  given  offence  without  any  corresponding 
advantage.'  On  this  occasion  he  acted  diffei'ently.  He 
felt,  as  he  said  himself, 

'  that  the  generous  devotion  to  the  cause  of  Christian  charity, 
for  which  the  Bishop  had  hazarded  so  much,  was  a  call  on 
all  conspicuous  clergymen  to  show  that  they  felt  the  merits 


CHAP.  XXIII      HIS  INVITATION  OF  COLENSO 


291 


of  his  conduct,  and  were  not  to  be  deterred  from  doing  him 
justice  by  any  theological  obloquy  under  which  he  might 
happen  to  labour.' 

The  same  considerations  were  strongly  urged  upon  him  by 
his  friends,  and  especially  by  Professor  Max  Miiller.  'The 
question  is,'  writes  Stanley  to  the  Professor, 

'will  anything  be  gained  by  asking  him  to  preach  in  the 
Abbey  If  it  is  thought  indispensable  for  Colenso's  posi- 
tion, I  would  ask  him.  But  I  am  very  doubtful.  I  should 
have  to  do  it  through  a  questionable  right ;  (I  mean  from 
the  divided  responsibility  which  the  Canons  share  with 
the  Dean,  and  which  I  can  only  override  by  a  kind  of 
imperious  absolutism).  It  will  probably  not  be  a  very  suc- 
cessful performance,  not  justifying  itself  like  your  lecture 
or  Caird's,  and  it  would  involve  a  strain  upon  me  which,  in 
my  present  anxieties,  I  am  not  very  well  able  to  bear.  And 
my  own  opinion  has  been  stated,  in  the  most  public, 
emphatic  way  which  I  could  choose.  Still,  I  repeat,  if 
the  thing  ought  to  be  done,  and  if  the  game  is  worth  the 
candle,  I  will  do  it.  Only,  I  should  like  my  friends  to 
consider  it  well  in  its  public  bearings.' 

After  much  hesitation  Stanley  decided  to  invite  Bishop 
Colenso  to  preach  in  the  Abbey.  In  order  to  relieve  the 
rest  of  the  Chapter  from  all  responsibility  in  the  matter,  he 
inaugurated  a  special  course  of  sermons  on  Monday  even- 
ings in  Advent  1874,  and  it  was  on  the  last  of  these  special 
services  that  he  determined  to  ask  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to 
occupy  the  pulpit. 

Meanwhile  the  situation  underwent  a  great  change.  It 
had  been  publicly  announced  that  on  Sunday,  December 
13th,  1874,  Dr.  Colenso  would  preach  for  the  Rev.  Stop- 
ford  Brooke  at  St.  James's,  York  Street.  The  Bishop  of 
London  (Dr.  Jackson),  however,  intervened  by  intimating 
that,  unless  the  proposed  sermon  were  quietly  abandoned, 
he  would  be  obliged  to  inhibit  the  Bishop  of  Natal  from 
preaching.    Dr.  Colenso  at  once  gave  way,  without  obliging 

u  2 


292 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


the  Bishop  of  London  to  proceed  to  extremities.  This 
episode  did  not  alter  Stanley's  determination.  In  spite  of 
what  had  occurred,  he  invited  the  Bishop  of  Natal  to  preach 
in  Westminster  Abbey  on  Monday,  December  21st,  1874. 

At  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  inform  the  Bishop  of 
London  that  he  had  offered  Dr.  Colenso  the  use  of  the 
Abbey  pulpit  as  a  mark  of  his  sympathy  with  the  object  of 
his  visit  to  England.    He  adds  the  hope  that  his  proposal, 

'  if  taken  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  offered,  will  have  the 
effect,  not  of  weakening,  but  of  strengthening  the  Church, 
by  showing  that  its  institutions  are  capable  of  honouring 
Divine  gifts  of  heart  and  mind,  and  of  rendering  homage  to 
the  weightier  matters  of  justice,  mercy,  and  truth,  even 
when  surrounded  with  elements  to  some  distasteful  and 
alarming,  and  will  in  the  long  run  tend,  not  to  distract,  but 
to  heal  and  pacify,  our  divisions.'^ 

Dr.  Colenso,  though  aware  that  Westminster  Abbey  was 
extra-diocesan,  and  therefore  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  Bishop  of  London,  wisely  declined  the  offer  to  preach. 

'  37  Phillimore  Gardens,  Kensington : 
'  December  17th,  1874. 

'  My  dear  Dean  of  Westminster,  —  I  have  been  consider- 
ing your  invitation  that  I  should  preach  in  the  Abbey  the 
last  of  the  Advent  sermons  on  Monday  next,  and  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  I  had  better  decline  to  comply  with 
your  kind  request.  I  need  hardly  say  that  under  other 
circumstances  I  should  have  gladly  carried  out  your  wishes. 
I  might,  perhaps,  have  tried  to  say  a  few  words  to  comfort 
the  hearts  of  some  who,  at  this  great  crisis  of  religious 
thought  in  England,  are  looking  anxiously  to  their  spiritual 
advisers  for  help  in  their  uncertainty.  I  might  have  tried 
also  to  impress  upon  my  fellow-countrymen  the  duty  which 
we  owe,  as  English  Christians,  towards  the  inferior  races 
under  our  charge  —  to  say  that  surely  the  rule  of  a  nation 
like  ours,  over  so  many  weaker  communities,  means  some- 

^  This  letter  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  as  well  as  the  two  following  letters, 
was  published  in  the  Times  of  Saturday,  December  19th,  1874. 


CHAP.  XXIII      HIS  INVITATION  OF  COLENSO 


293 


thing  more  than  the  amount  of  property,  of  material  wealth, 
she  can  squeeze  out  of  the  subject-peoples  —  that  if  Eng- 
land extends  her  sway  over  the  earth,  to  enforce  justice,  to 
practise  mercy,  to  show  care  and  pity  for  the  weak  and 
helpless,  to  redress  the  wrongs  of  the  downtrodden  and 
oppressed,  and  to  raise  its  dependents  in  the  scale  of 
humanity,  there  is  then  a  reason  for  the  existence  of  her 
vast  Colonial  Empire  —  that  it  is  only  such  acts  as  these 
which  will  show  that  our  religion  is  a  reality,  and  not  a 
mere  name,  and  that  the  passionate  love  of  right  and  justice 
which  God  has  planted  in  the  bosom  of  His  children  is  a 
sign  that  our  Father  thinks  and  feels  as  we  do.  But  there 
are  others  who  will  teach  these  things  when  I  am  gone.  I 
did  not  come  home  to  assert  my  own  personal  position  in 
the  Church  of  England  —  if  that  were  doubtful  which  has 
been  recognised  by  his  Grace  the  Primate  of  All  England, 
and,  above  all,  by  the  Crown — and  I  have  no  wish  what- 
ever to  occupy  the  few  remaining  days  of  my  stay  in 
England  with  any  such  contention  as  might  seem  to  be 
implied  by  my  preaching  at  Westminster  after  the  recent 
action  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  though,  of  course,  I  am 
aware  that  you  are  not  under  his  jurisdiction.  I  therefore 
think  it  best  not  to  avail  myself  of  the  invitation  which  you 
have  given  me  to  preach  in  the  venerable  Abbey,  so  dear 
to  the  memories  of  Englishmen  ;  and  I  shall  return  to  my 
diocese  rejoicing  that  I  have  been  permitted  to  bear  to 
England  the  cry  of  the  oppressed,  and  thankful  that  by 
English  hearts  that  cry  has  been  heard  and  answered. 
'  I  am,  my  dear  Dean  of  Westminster, 

'  Yours  very  truly, 

'  J.  W.  Natal.' 

To  this  letter  Stanley  replied  as  follows : 

'Deanery,  Westminster:  Dec.  i8th,  1874. 

'  My  dear  Bishop  of  Natal,  —  I  beg  to  thank  you  for  your 
letter  of  yesterday.  In  proposing  to  you  that  you  should 
preach  in  Westminster  Abbey,  it  was  my  wish  to  render 
such  honour  as  my  office  here  permitted  to  your  Christian 
labours  as  a  missionary-bishop,  and  to  your  courageous 
defence  of  what  you  believed  to  be  true  and  just.  I 
acquiesce  in  your,  to  me  unexpected,  decision,  with  a 
mingled  feeling  of  regret  and  of  pleasure.    Of  regret,  that 


294 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


the  congregation  of  Westminster  Abbey  will  lose  the 
opportunity  of  hearing  within  its  walls  a  voice  to  which 
circumstances  have  given  (if  I  may  venture  to  say  so)  a 
power  beyond  its  own.  Of  pleasure,  from  the  thought  that 
possibly  the  moderation  and  love  of  peace  which  have 
actuated  you  in  this  resolve  may  tend  to  soften  those  bitter 
feelings  and  unreasonable  prejudices  which  it  was  no  less 
my  own  hope,  in  making  the  offer,  to  correct  or  subdue.  I 
have  stated  elsewhere  the  grounds  on  which  it  appeared  to 
me  that,  without  disrespect  to  those  bishops  who  have 
taken  part  against  you,  you  might  have  availed  yourself  of 
this  or  any  other  like  opportunity  which  was  offered  to 
you.  One  bishop  certainly,  probably  more,  had  your  stay 
been  prolonged,  would  have  taken  the  same  view  of  what 
is  due  to  your  public  services  as  is,  no  doubt,  shared  by 
thousands  of  your  countrymen.  But  in  matters  of  this 
nature  generosity,  delicacy,  and  forbearance  are  never 
thrown  away,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that,  when  you  have 
returned  to  your  distant  labours,  you  will  be  encouraged  by 
the  thought  that  in  this,  as  in  the  greater  matters  which 
brought  you  home,  your  brief  visit  to  England  has  not 
been  altogether  in  vain. 

'  Believe  me 

'  Yours  very  faithfully, 

'Arthur  P.  Stanley.' 

'  As  to  the  proposal  itself,'  writes  Stanley  to  Archbishop 
Tait  on  December  22nd,  1874, 

'  it  cost  me  a  great  effort,  situated  as  I  am,  to  make  an  offer 
which  I  anticipated  would  produce  a  storm  of  controversy. 
The  result  has  shown  how  much  one  had  overestimated  the 
opposition.  I  have  had  a  multitude  of  letters  since  the 
public  announcement,  but  instead  of  the  usual  torrent  of 
invectives,  only  one  letter  of  complaint,  and  that  anonymous. 

'  No  doubt  this  has  been  greatly  assisted  by  Colenso's 
magnanimity —  by  me  quite  unexpected  —  in  refusing.  But 
this  will  probably  tend  to  fortify  his  position,  and  to 
nullify  the  effects  of  the  inhibitions,  both  here  and  in 
Africa. 

'  I  now  feel  that  I  have  every  cause  to  be  thankful  for 
having  made  the  attempt.' 


CHAP.  XXIII  MISSIONARY  LECTURES 


295 


In  the  last  year  of  Stanley's  life,  it  may  be  added,  he 
made  his  last  protest  on  behalf  of  Bishop  Colenso.  In  the 
early  part  of  188 1,  at  a  stormy  and  tumultuous  meeting  of 
the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  when  a 
question  arose  relating  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  he  once 
more  stood  forth  as  the  champion  of  an  '  absent  and  friend- 
less '  man.    '  The  Bishop  of  Natal,'  he  said, 

'  is  the  one  colonial  bishop  who  has  translated  the  Bible 
into  the  language  of  the  natives  of  his  diocese.  He  is  the 
one  colonial  bishop  who,  when  he  believed  a  native  to  be 
wronged,  left  his  diocese,  journeyed  to  London,  and  never 
rested  till  he  had  procured  the  reversal  of  that  wrong.  He 
is  the  one  colonial  bishop  who,  as  soon  as  he  had  done 
this,  returned  immediately  to  his  diocese  and  his  work. 
For  these  acts  he  has  never  received  any  praise,  any  en- 
couragement, from  this,  the  oldest  of  our  missionary  socie- 
ties. For  these  deeds  he  will  be  remembered  when  you 
who  censure  him  are  dead,  buried,  and  forgotten.' 

Another  plan  which  Stanley  adopted  for  enlarging  the 
sphere  of  influence  that  the  Abbey  might  exercise  was  the 
delivery  of  lectures  in  the  nave  of  Westminster.  The  occa- 
sion was  the  appointment  by  Archbishop  Tait  of  St. 
Andrew's  Day  as  a  Day  of  Intercession  for  Missions. 
Stanley  determined  to  invite  others  than  those  of  his  own 
ministry  and  communion  '  to  take  their  part  in  showing 
that  they,  too,  joined,  on  various  grounds,  in  this  common 
work  of  ours,  and  that,  at  least  in  this  place,  the  heathen 
world  should  not  be  scandalised  by  the  echoes  of  a  disunited 
Christendom.'  By  inviting  laymen  to  lecture  on  Christian 
missions  he  bore  his  testimony  to  the  facts  —  that  the  laity 
really  are  the  English  Church,  and  that  by  lay  as  well  as 
clerical  learning  and  intelligence  religion  may  be  propa- 
gated and  its  questions  answered.  His  own  strong  wish 
also  was  to  open  the  pulpit  of  the  Abbey  to  the  Noncon- 
formist clergy.    But  this  was  impossible,  though  the  mis- 


296 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872-78 


sionary  lectures  on  St.  Andrew's  Day  afforded  him  a  modi- 
fied opportunity  of  enlisting  their  services  in  a  common 
cause.  In  1877,  when  writing  to  Dr.  Stoughton,  then  Pro- 
fessor of  Historical  Theology  in  the  Independent  College, 
Hampstead,  to  thank  him  for  the  lecture  which  he  had 
recently  delivered  in  the  nave  of  the  Abbey,  he  says  : 

'  I  had  long  looked  forward  to  hearing  your  voice  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  and  though  I  should  have  wished  that 
it  had  been  in  the  heart  of  our  services,  and  not  on  the 
outskirts,  yet  it  was  truly  welcome,  anyhow  and  anywhere, 
under  our  roof.' 

The  first  year  in  which  a  lecture  was  delivered  was 
1872.  Professor  Max  Miiller  was  asked  to  give  the  first 
lecture,  in  the  nave  of  the  Abbey.  He,  however,  hesitated, 
and  his  place  was  taken  by  a  missionary,  who  recounted 
his  experiences  in  India.  The  following  year  Stanley 
again  applied  to  Professor  Max  Miiller,  and  on  this  occa- 
sion with  success.  On  the  legality  of  the  proposed  lecture 
Stanley  had  no  doubt.    '  In  order,'  he  says, 

'to  fortify  my  belief  that  in  so  doing  I  was  within  the  let- 
ter of  the  law  I  consulted  Lord  Coleridge,  now  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice.  He  was  clearly  of  opinion  that  the  lecture 
might  take  place,  and  consulted  the  Lords  Justices,  with 
whom  he  had  met  in  consultation  on  some  other  subjects. 
They  also  were  of  the  same  opinion.  In  accordance  with 
his  advice,  I  adopted  a  few  precautions,  which  were,  perhaps, 
unnecessary,  but  which  it  seemed  reasonable  to  take  to 
avoid  needless  offence.  The  service  was  in  the  nave,  not 
in  the  choir ;  the  lecture  was  delivered  from  the  reading- 
desk,  not  from  the  pulpit ;  the  garment  which  I  wore  was 
my  black  Geneva  gown,  not  my  surplice;  a  few  hymns 
and  prayers  were  substituted  for  the  ordinary  service.' 

But  though  assured  of  the  legality  of  the  proceeding, 
Stanley  did  not  take  the  step  without  some  hesitation. 
Writing  to  Professor  Max  Miiller  on  November  24th,  1873, 
he  says  : 


CHAP.  XX 1 11 


MISSIONARY  LECTURES 


297 


'  I  feel,  of  course,  that  it  is  taking  a  step  which  may- 
involve  serious  consequences.  I  do  not  mean  legally, 
because  on  that  I  am  quite  secure,  but  as  an  opening  for 
the  future,  which  may  be  both  good  and  bad.  Still,  it 
seems  to  me  right  to  make  the  experiment,  and,  if  it  is  to 
be  made,  I  do  not  think  that  I  would  have  a  better  occa- 
sion or  a  better  man.  I  know  that  I  should  be  safe  in  your 
hands,  both  as  to  the  matter  and  the  manner,  both  as  to 
the  knowledge  and  the  feeling.' 

The  attention  which  this  lay  lecture  attracted  by  its 
ability,  and  by  the  novelty  of  the  proceeding,  encouraged 
Stanley  to  persevere  in  his  experiment.  The  third  lecture 
was  delivered  in  1874,  by  the  Rev.  James  Caird,  Principal 
of  the  University  of  Glasgow,  'the  most  eloquent  orator,' 
as  Stanley  calls  him,  'of  the  Northern  Kingdom.'  'The 
lecture  was,'  he  adds, 

'  in  point  of  delivery  and  of  substance  conjoined,  the  most 
impressive  address  that  I  have  ever  heard  within  West- 
minster Abbey.  Charles  Kingsley  was  there,  for  the  last 
time  in  his  life.  He  at  times  could  hardly  help  crying 
out  "  Bravo  ! "  whilst  the  lecture  was  being  delivered. 
He  caught  the  cold  in  returning  to  the  Cloisters  that 
night  which  ended  in  his  death.' 

Four  more  lectures  were  delivered.  The  fourth  was  by 
Dr.  Moffat,  the  father-in-law  of  Livingstone ;  the  fifth,  by 
Archdeacon  Reichel,  now  Bishop  of  Meath  ;  the  sixth,  by 
Dr.  Stoughton ;  the  seventh,  and  last,  by  the  late  Principal 
Tulloch,  of  St.  Andrews  University,  and  at  that  time 
Moderator  of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland.  After  Principal  Tulloch's  address  the  lectures 
were  discontinued,  partly  because  the  date  fixed  for  the 
Day  of  Intercession  was  changed,  partly  from  the  lack  of 
interest  shown  in  them,  partly  from  the  difficulty  of  finding 
lecturers  who  were  equal  to  the  magnitude  of  the  occasion. 
The  Liberal  papers  very  slightly  sympathised  with  the  ex- 
periment ;  the  Nonconformist  organs  were  studiously  cold  ; 


298 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


and  Stanley  himself  felt  that  his  experience  of  the  results 
of  these  exceptional  services  scarcely  justified  their  con- 
tinuance. 

If  the  Mission  Lectures  were  a  hazardous  and  not  wholly 
successful  experiment,  the  performance  of  Sebastian  Bach's 
Passion  Music  on  Maundy  Thursday  in  1871,  though  an 
equally  bold  innovation,  was  abundantly  justified  by  results. 
For  the  first  time  in  this  country  the  great  composer's 
illustration  of  the  Passion  of  our  Saviour,  as  related  in  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Matthew,  was  heard,  according  to  his  own 
intention,  as  an  integral  part  of  an  act  of  worship.  That 
such  an  innovation  should  have  been  ventured  upon  in  such 
a  place  is  not  a  little  remarkable.  Far  more  surprising  is 
it  that  one  so  destitute  of  musical  feeling  as  Stanley  should 
have  been  the  first  person  to  introduce  it,  with  its  full 
orchestral  accompaniment,  into  the  religious  services  of 
the  Church.  Before  1871  musical  festivals  had  been  held 
in  cathedrals.  But  at  these  festivals  the  religious  element 
was  almost  entirely  wanting.  It  was  Stanley  who  first  in- 
vested the  performance  of  great  musical  works  in  this 
country  with  the  solemn  religious  character  which  was 
their  most  appropriate  setting. 

In  the  early  part  of  1871  the  Precentor  of  the  Abbey, 
the  Rev.  S.  Flood-Jones,  suggested  to  Stanley  the  idea  of 
giving  Bach's  Passion  Music  as  a  special  service  in  the 
Abbey.  The  suggestion  pleased  him,  and  he  resolved  to 
take  upon  himself  the  whole  cost  and  responsibility  of 
the  experiment.  The  singers  and  musicians  so  carefully 
trained  by  Mr.  (now  Sir)  Joseph  Barnby  were  enlisted  for 
the  performance.  As  soon  as  the  platform  was  erected  in 
the  nave  for  the  reception  of  fifty  instrumentalists  and  an 
enlarged  choir  of  250  singers,  strong  remonstrances  were 
addressed  to  Stanley.  But  he  remained  firm,  arguing  that, 
if  the  performance  of  oratorios  in  cathedrals  was  legal. 


CHAi'.  XXIII  BACH'S  PASS/ON  MUSIC 


299 


though  unaccompanied  by  religious  services,  they  could 
not  be  less  legal  because  they  were  essential  features  in  a 
religious  service. 

On  the  evening  of  Holy  Thursday,  April  6th,  1871,  the 
Passion  Music  was  given  in  Westminster  Abbey  in  the 
presence  of  a  vast  congregation,  while  outside  the  doors 
had  gathered  a  crowd  of  persons  who  were  unable  to  obtain 
admission.  The  service  began  with  the  usual  order  for 
Evening  Prayer.  At  the  point  where  the  Psalms  are  usu- 
ally chanted  the  first  part  of  the  Passion  Music  was  per- 
formed by  the  full  choir  and  orchestra.  Between  the  two 
parts  a  sermon  was  preached  by  Stanley.  He  chose  for 
his  text  the  words,  '  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth, 
will  draw  all  men  unto  me '  (John  xii.  32).  At  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  sermon,  in  which  he  vindicated  the  propriety 
of  devoting  the  highest  gifts  of  man,  through  whatever 
medium  of  art  they  revealed  themselves,  to  the  service  and 
glory  of  the  Creator,  the  second  portion  was  rendered. 

The  solemn  beauty  of  the  music  produced  a  profound 
impression  on  those  who  heard  it.  But  the  criticisms  of 
the  press  were  at  variance.  The  '  Times  '  warmly  approved 
of  the  innovation,  and  one  religious  newspaper  —  the 
'  Guardian '  —  spoke  of  the  '  liberality  and  large-mindedness 
of  Dean  Stanley,  to  which  we  are  indebted  for  a  hearing 
of  the  work  in  its  proper  place  —  in  church.'  On  the  other 
hand,  another  religious  organ  thus  described  the  service : 

'The  Dean  of  Westminster,  on  the  evening  of  Maundy 
Thursday,  gave  a  grand  performance  of  Bach's  Passion 
Music  in  the  Abbey,  by  way  of  counterpoise  to  such  devo- 
tions as  the  Reproaches,  the  Three  Hours,  and  the  Sta- 
tions. The  result  was  exactly  what  might  have  been 
expected.  The  church  was  crammed,  and  the  audience  — 
congregation  would  be  a  misnomer  —  was  very  much  the 
same  as  at  any  other  concert.  Dean  Stanley,  of  course, 
took  the  opportunity  of  airing  his  peculiar  views  as  to  the 
Atonement,  the  chief  purpose  of  which,  he  seemed  to 


300 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1871-80 


think,  was  to  furnish  artists  of  all  kinds,  not  to  say  graphic 
writers,  with  subjects.' 

A  third  weekly  censor  of  literary  taste,  not  connected 
with  any  religious  party,  but  always  noted  for  its  bitter 
attacks  on  Stanley,  attributed 

'it  to  the  Dean's  well-known  liberality  that  he  provided  his 
entertainment  on  "Good  Friday  Eve,"  in  order  to  compete 
as  harmlessly  as  possible  with  his  rivals  at  Sydenham  and 
elsewhere.  .  .  .  The  Dean's  programme  is  weighted  with 
some  three  minutes  of  worship,  and  a  sermon,  the  length 
of  which  is  indefinite  ;  but  then  it  has  the  religious  flavour 
to  an  extent  which  no  lay  competitor  can  ever  offer.  .  .  . 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Crystal  Palace  offers  the  advan- 
tages of  a  run  into  what  is  by  courtesy  called  "the  coun- 
try," and  the  attractions  of  the  grounds,  with  their  facilities 
for  "kiss-in-the-ring"  and  opportunities  of  frequent  refec- 
tion, so  essential  to  a  Cockney's  holiday.' 

Stanley's  experiment  rather  than  the  language  of  his 
critics  has  been  justified  by  results.  The  performance  was 
repeated,  with  equal  success,  in  the  following  year,  and 
similar  performances  since  that  time  have  been  so  fre- 
quently and  generally  given  in  cathedrals  and  churches 
that  the  Passion  Music  may  almost  be  regarded  as  a  spe- 
cial service  of  the  English  Church. 

Another  special  service  arranged  and  carried  out  by 
Stanley  was  the  service  for  children  which  was  held  on  the 
afternoons  of  successive  Holy  Innocents'  Days.  He  had 
always  enjoyed  the  companionship  of  children,  and  the 
interest  which  he  displayed  in  them  in  public  was  a  most 
marked  characteristic  of  his  private  life.  His  letters  as  a 
boy  at  Rugby  or  at  O.xford  are  filled  with  affectionate 
references  to  his  cousins,  'the  dear  children  at  Sheen.'  As 
a  young  man,  he  delighted  to  collect  a  number  of  them  into 
a  room  with  him  by  himself,  to  play  with  them  and  tell  them 
stories  ;  at  Norwich,  when  staying  in  his  father's  house,  he 
was  accustomed  to  hold  a  Bible-class  for  them  on  Sunday 


CHAP,  xxm         SERVICES  FOR  CHILDREN 


301 


afternoons  ;  as  Dean  of  Westminster,  he  enjoyed  taking 
them  over  the  Abbey,  especially  if  they  were  not  too  old  to 
be  on  their  good  behaviour,  and  would  ask  questions  and 
listen  to  the  answers.  The  little  Barbara  James  had  been 
his  favourite  companion  on  the  Rhine  steamer  in  1840; 
the  children  of  his  servant  Waters  were  his  playmates  in 
his  house  at  Christ  Church  ;  the  Deanery  at  Westminster 
was  seldom  without  the  presence  of  a  small  nephew.  And 
at  all  times  his  playful  tenderness,  and  his  thorough  sym- 
pathy with  innocent  mirth  and  fun,  not  only  attracted  him 
to  children,  but  in  turn  drew  children  towards  him. 

These  services  began  on  December  28th,  1871,  and  he 
continued  them  to  the  year  of  his  death.  The  Psalms 
were  specially  selected  for  the  occasion.  The  eighth  Psalm 
was  chosen,  to  show  '  how  little  children  may  find  out  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  great  works  of  Nature  ' ;  the  fifteenth 
Psalm,  that  they  might  see  '  how,  from  our  earliest  years 
down  to  our  latest  age,  that  in  which  God  finds  most  pleas- 
ure is  the  humble,  pure,  truthful,  honourable  mind '  ;  the 
127th  Psalm,  in  order  to  impress  on  parents  '  what  precious, 
inestimable  gifts  are  given  them  in  their  little  children.' 
The  Lessons  were,  in  the  same  way,  specially  selected : 

'  the  First  Lesson  to  remind  you  how  little  Samuel  knelt 
upon  his  knees  at  morning  and  evening,  waiting  for  the 
voice  of  God  to  tell  him  what  he  was  to  do ;  and  the  Sec- 
ond, to  set  before  us  the  example  of  our  Saviour  Christ 
himself  as  the  little  child.' 

The  short,  simple  sermons  which  he  preached  on  these 
occasions  are  admirably  adapted  to  their  purpose.  Ad- 
dressed to  parents  as  well  as  to  children,  they  riveted  the 
attention  of  both  alike.  In  these  addresses  he  showed  a 
real  genius  for  seizing  upon  happy  subjects  suggested  by 
the  Abbey  itself  or  by  the  special  services  of  the  day.  In 
1873,  vk^hen  Holy  Innocents'  Day  fell  on  Sunday,  the  chil- 


302 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1871-80 


dren's  service  was  held  on  December  27th  (St.  John's 
Day),  and  Stanley  points  his  moral  from  the  tradition  and 
stories  of  the  Apostle.  In  1875  he  sets  before  the  chil- 
dren the  example  of  what  may  be  expected  from  them  and 
draws  his  illustrations  from  the  story  of  David  and  Goliath, 
and  from  the  conduct  of  the  boys  during  the  fire  which 
had  the  day  before  destroyed  the  Goliath  training-ship  in 
the  Thames.  In  1877  he  collects  the  remembrances  which 
the  Abbey  contains  of  'little  boys  and  girls  whose  death 
shot  a  pang  through  the  hearts  of  those  who  loved  them, 
and  who  wished  that  they  never  should  be  forgotten.'  In 
1878  he  takes  the  story  of  the  great  heathen  giant,  St. 
Christopher,  as  it  is  sculptured  in  Henry  VII. 's  Chapel, 
and  uses  it  to  enforce  the  lessons  that 

He  prayeth  well  who  loveth  well, 
Both  man  and  bird  and  beast, 

and  that  parents  bear  upon  their  shoulders  the  burden  of 
forming  the  characters  of  their  children. 

Many  of  the  children,  after  the  service  was  over,  were 
entertained  at  tea  in  the  Deanery  by  Stanley  and  Lady 
Augusta,  whose  love  for  them  equalled,  if  it  did  not  surpass, 
his  own.  After  tea  they  were  encouraged  to  act  charades, 
or  to  play  games  in  a  house  which  might  seem  to  be  de- 
signed for  '  hide-and-seek.'  The  smallest  child  felt  at  home 
with  him  at  once.  Among  the  letters  which  he  preserved 
most  carefully  were  some  from  his  little  friends,  and,  with 
other  objects  that  stood  on  his  mantelpiece  till  the  day  of 
his  death,  was  a  Christmas-card  sent  him  by  a  little  boy  to 
whom  he  was  warmly  attached.  His  interest  in  them  never 
flagged.  In  the  midst  of  his  many  occupations  he  did  not 
forget  to  write  for  them,  as  he  had  done  in  his  own  childhood 
and  boyhood,  verses  on  the  deaths  of  their  pets,  or  to  add 
new  lines  or  suggest  new  scenes  for  their  childish  plays. 


CHAP.  XXIII  WEEK-DAY  SERMONS 


303 


After  his  wife's  death  he  still  kept  up,  as  far  as  possible, 
these  gatherings  of  children,  and,  endeavouring  in  this,  as 
in  other  instances,  to  blend  the  thought  of  her  with  their 
innocent  gaiety,  he  would  invite  the  same  children  whom 
she  had  asked,  only  with  the  addition  of  their  younger 
brothers  and  sisters. 

To  the  end  of  his  career  as  Dean  he  was  always  medi- 
tating on  new  plans  which  might  make  the  services  of  the 
Abbey  more  widely  useful,  and  attract  persons  to  whom 
the  ordinary  services  were  inconvenient  or  distasteful. 
Such  services  were  those  that  he  held  on  successive  Sat- 
urday afternoons  in  the  months  of  June  and  July  1881. 
It  was  to  the  audiences  which  gathered  on  these  occasions 
that  he  began  a  course  of  brief  sermons  on  the  Beatitudes. 
The  course  was  never  finished  :  the  fourth  sermon,  which 
was  delivered  on  July  9,  1881,  was  the  last  that  he  ever 
preached. 

In  this  course  of  week-day  sermons  he  endeavours  to  take 

'from  those  who  are  commemorated  in  this  Abbey  some 
one  or  two  persons  for  each  of  the  Beatitudes  who  may 
give  us  something  of  a  glimpse  of  what  is  meant  by  the 
"pure  in  heart,"  by  the  "merciful,"  by  the  "poor  in 
spirit,"  by  the  "peacemakers,"  by  those  who  "hunger  and 
thirst  after  righteousness,"  and  those  who  are  persecuted 
for  "  righteousness'  sake."  If  I  can  raise  your  minds  to  the 
appreciation  of  such  virtues,  if  I  can  do  this  in  any  way  so 
as  to  produce  an  impression  upon  you  that  we  have  some- 
thing in  life  worth  striving  for,  and  that  this  Abbey,  by  its 
various  examples,  has  something  worth  teaching,  I  shall 
not  have  spoken  in  vain.' 

The  names  that  he  selects  are  characteristic.  As  types 
of  the  unselfishness  of  the  'poor  in  spirit'  he  chooses  Ed- 
ward the  Confessor,  and  Jeremiah  Horrocks,  the  scientific 
discoverer.  Of  those  '  that  mourn '  the  Abbey  is  full. 
One  grave  alone  is  commended  by  nothing  but  its  'sug- 
gestive sorrow':  it  is  the  tablet  in  the  Cloisters  to  'Jane 


304  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1881 

Lister,  dear  cbilde,  died  October  7,  1688.'  The  venerable 
and  beautiful  figure  of  Margaret  Tudor,  mother  of  Henry 
VII.,  exemplifies  meekness.  Of  those  who  'hunger  and 
thirst  after  righteousness,'  whose  souls  aspire  to  higher  and 
severer  courses  of  duty,  the  selected  instance  is  Henry  V. 
On  the  name  of  the  'merciful'  Martin  of  Galway,  the 
dumb  animals,  if  they  could  speak,  would  pour  out  their 
blessings  ;  by  their  possession  of  this  virtue  Charles  James 
Fox,  who  exerted  himself  to  destroy  the  slave-trade,  and 
Charles  Dickens,  who  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  poor  and 
the  suffering,  are  remembered  among  those  who  '  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness.'  In  the  white  soul  of  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  he  finds  that  single-minded  pursuit  of  truth 
which  in  scientific  discovery  is  purity  ;  in  Milton's  exquisite 
lines  on  chastity  and  married  love,  in  the  unsullied  page  of 
Addison,  in  the  natural  innocence  of  Wordsworth,  he  dis- 
covers the  purity  of  heart  which  frees  their  writings  from 
those  dark  and  fleshly  stains  that  often  defile  literature. 

In  these  Saturday  sermons  on  the  Beatitudes  Stanley 
gives  a  more  special  and  pointed  application  to  the 
thoughts  which  were  ever  in  his  mind  when  guiding  visit- 
ors through  the  Abbey.  It  was  his  delight  to  take  literary 
and  listening  friends,  eminent  strangers,  and  parties  of 
working-men,  or  of  children,  from  tomb  to  tomb,  to  answer 
their  questions  and  pour  out  his  knowledge. 

The  first  of  his  illustrious  visitors  was  Queen  Emma  of 
the  Sandwich  Islands.  Of  all  the  distinguished  persons 
who  visited  Westminster  while  he  was  Dean,  she  was  '  the 
is  cr.  who  expressed  the  greatest  interest  in  the  Abbey.' 
horn  knowledge  of  the  various  monuments  was  surprising, 
^gged.^xpressed  distress  at  not  finding  a  monument  to 
^get  to  ge,  'the  author  of  the  "Ancient  Mariner,"'  and  she 
kl  boylhat  General  Wolfe  was  buried,  not  in  the  Abbey, 
bii  lineGreenwich,  a  fact  which,  in  those  early  days  of  his 

\ 


CHAP.  XXIII 


ILLUSTRIOUS  VISITORS 


305 


experience,  Stanley  had  not  himself  known.  Another  for- 
eign potentate  was  the  Shah  of  Persia.  The  moment  that 
he  entered  the  west  door  of  the  Abbey  he  exclaimed  in 
French,  '  Where  is  Pitt Where  is  Fox  } '  As  he  proceeded 
up  the  nave,  he  said  in  Persian  to  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson, 
'  St.  Paul's  is  the  efflorescence  of  architecture,  Westminster 
Abbey  is  its  kernel.'  All  his  questions,  which  were  many 
and  appropriate,  were  delivered,'  writes  Stanley,  '  with 
a  fierceness  of  tone  and  demeanour  unlike  anything  I 
have  ever  witnessed.'  A  third  royal  visitor  was  the  Em- 
peror of  Brazil,  who  arrived  at  the  Deanery  one  Sunday 
afternoon  between  the  services.  '  I  do  not  wish,'  he  told 
Stanley,  '  to  see  the  Abbey  at  length,  because  I  have  seen 
it  before,  but  I  wish  to  see  one  or  two  things  that  I 
omitted  to  see  on  the  former  occasion.'  The  two  things 
which  he  wished  to  see  were  the  grave  of  Livingstone  and 
the  monument  of  Dr.  Blow,  the  organist.  On  leaving  he 
said,  '  I  shall  come  again  on  my  return  from  Palestine.  I 
know  that  you  have  written  a  book  on  it,  which  I  shall 
read.'  The  following  year  he  returned,  and  asked  to  see 
the  Abbey.  He  went  through  it  carefully.  As  he  passed 
the  grave  of  Lady  Augusta  Stanley,  he  called  the  attention 
of  his  attendants  to  it,  and  crossed  himself  three  times.  In 
Poets'  Corner  he  saw  the  grave  of  the  Duke  of  Argyll. 
'That,'  said  Stanley,  'I  regard  as  the  monument  of  Walter 
Scott,  for  he  is  the  hero  of  what  you  call  in  French  the 
prison  of  Edinburgh.'  'Ah!'  the  Emperor  replied,  '  it  is 
what  you  call  Midlothian's  Heart.  It  is  most  beautiful ! 
I  have  seen  Effie  Deans  to-day.'  He  had  come  to  the 
Abbey  on  his  way  from  the  National  Gallery,  where  he  had 
seen  the  picture  by  Millais  of  Effie  Deans  and  George 
Robertson,  and  was  thus  able  at  a  moment's  notice  to 
reproduce  the  allusion.  '  Of  all  eminent  persons,'  says 
VOL.  II  X 


3o6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1 880 


Stanley,  '  who  visited  the  Abbey,  he  certainly  showed  the 
most  minute  and  extensive  knowledge.' 

Among  other  distinguished  persons  who  visited  the 
Abbey  with  Stanley  may  be  mentioned  M.  Renan,  who  in 
1880  was  lecturing  in  London.  '  Everything  he  saw,'  writes 
Stanley, 

'  was  seen  with  the  greatest  interest.  I  do  not  think  that 
he,  any  more  than  other  Frenchmen,  was  familiar  with  the 
mediaeval  history  of  English  kings,  but  still  the  general 
effect  of  the  Confessor's  Chapel  was  vividly  impressed  upon 
him.  I  told  him  the  story  that  is  portrayed  there,  of  the 
Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus,  whom,  in  a  trance,  the  Confessor 
had  seen  turning  round  from  their  right  sides  to  their  left, 
and  from  which  he  augured  that  the  great  changes  of  the 
Norman  Conquest  were  impending  over  the  world.  He  also 
saw  with  interest  the  place  designed  for  the  monument  of 
the  Prince  Imperial,  the  controversy  about  which  had  not 
then  reached  a  termination.  "  It  is  strange,"  he  said,  "  how 
much  more  poetical  are  the  events  of  history  than  poetry 
itself." 

'  A  few  days  afterwards  I  met  M.  Renan  at  dinner  in 
London.  It  was  just  when  the  decisive  change  of  public 
feeling  in  the  general  election  was  taking  place,  and  I  asked, 
"  What  impression  is  jDroduced  upon  you  by  this  great 
event "  He  said,  "  It  reminds  me  of  the  story  which  you 
told  me  in  the  Chapel  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  The 
people  are  ordinarily  like  the  Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus. 
They  sleep  from  generation  to  generation,  and  nothing 
occurs  to  disturb  their  slumbers.  Now  and  then,  like  the 
Sleepers,  they  turn  round  from  the  right  to  the  left,  or  from 
the  left  hand  to  the  right,  and  then  ensue  the  great  changes 
of  mankind."  ' 

Even  of  greater  interest  to  Stanley  than  individuals, 
however  eminent,  were  the  crowds  of  working-men  who, 
on  Mondays  and  public  holidays,  were  attracted  to  West- 
minster Abbey.  Under  Dean  Trench  the  nave  and  tran- 
septs of  the  Abbey  were  thrown  open  to  the  public  without 
payment.  In  Stanley's  time  two  further  steps  were  taken 
in  the  same  direction.    The  interior  chapels  were  opened  to 


CHAP.  XXIII        FREE  DAYS  AT  THE  ABBEY 


307 


all-comers,  free  of  charge,  every  Monday  in  the  year,  and 
on  Easter  Monday  and  Easter  Tuesday,  Whit  Monday  and 
Whit  Tuesday,  the  August  Bank  Holiday,  and  Boxing- 
Day.  It  was  his  hope  that  he  might  even  be  able  to  open 
the  Abbey  gratuitously  to  the  public  every  day  of  the  year. 
But  in  this  hope  he  was  disappointed.  The  proceeds  of 
the  small  fee  for  admission  defrayed  the  expenses  of  the 
vergers  and  other  officials  charged  with  the  protection  of 
the  Abbey,  and  it  was  therefore  found  to  be  impossible  to 
admit  the  public  free  of  charge.  Since  Stanley's  death,  and 
by  his  generous  bequest  of  3000/.  for  the  purpose,  one  other 
day  (Tuesday)  has  been  added  to  those  on  which  the  Abbey 
is  thrown  open  gratuitously.  '  Easter  Monday,'  he  writes 
to  his  sister  Mary  in  April  1870, 

'was  the  great  trial  for  the  opening  of  the  Abbey  on 
Mondays.  We  had  4,000  the  week  before,  and  were 
therefore  prepared  with  additional  policemen.  I  do  not 
think  there  were  quite  so  many  as  we  expected — about 
9,000.  I  went  in  and  out  several  times.  Of  all  the  people 
that  I  asked,  only  one  had  been  there  before.  They  all 
expressed  the  deepest  gratitude.  One  man  from  Birming- 
ham said  that  he  should  so  very  much  like  to  let  Dean 
Stanley  know  what  pleasure  he  had  received.  After  letting 
him  talk  on  a  little,  I  told  him  who  I  was.  They  came  with 
all  their  children,  which  was,  of  course,  quite  impossible 
when  each  had  to  pay  sixpence.  The  service  on  Easter 
Monday  was  quite  as  full  as  on  Easter  Sunday,  and  I  had 
the  Easter  Hymn  hung  up  everywhere  for  them  to  sing. 
This  is  the  chief  pleasure  that  I  have  had  this  year.' 

It  was  his  habit  to  walk  about  the  Abbey  on  these  occa- 
sions, when  the  building  was  thronged  with  sightseers, 
and  to  fall  into  conversation  with  them  on  the  tombs  and 
monuments.  One  working-man,  thus  encountered,  de- 
lighted him  by  asking 'whether  in  these  great  cathedrals 
all  denominations  did  not  worship.'    A  little  boy  whom 


3o8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1880 


he  met  wandering  through  the  Abbey  was  full  of  informa- 
tion on  every  subject  connected  with  the  monuments. 

'  He  asked  to  see  the  grave  of  Pym,  of  Strode  (of  whom 
he  spoke  as  one  of  the  Five  Members),  looked  at  the  bust  of 
Thackeray,  and  said  that,  as  he  understood,  there  was  a  de- 
scription given  of  him  in  "Endymion,"  which  he  had  not 
yet  read;  and  spoke  of  having  read  the  "Paradise  Lost" 
and  the  "Paradise  Regained  "  of  Milton,  and  hoping  soon 
to  read  the  "  Penseroso  "  and  the  "  Comus."  ' 

So  struck  was  Stanley  with  the  boy's  intelligence  that 
he  provided  for  his  education. 

On  Easter  Monday  in  1880,  after  the  afternoon  service, 
a  lighterman  of  the  name  of  Giles,  and  his  wife,  were  stand- 
ing before  the  monument  to  John  and  Charles  Wesley, 
when  Stanley,  passing  in  front  of  them,  turned  round,  and 
asked,  '  Do  you  not  think  those  words  —  "I  look  upon  all 
the  world  as  my  parish  "  —  most  beautiful  and  appropri- 
ate .''  "  After  some  conversation,  the  lighterman  asked 
him  where  he  could  see  the  fragment  of  the  carved  fringe 
of  Torrigiani's  altar.  Stanley  took  him  to  see  what  he 
wanted,  and  then  '  to  the  grave  of  my  dear  wife,'  and  after- 
wards to  various  objects  of  interest  in  the  Abbey.  '  May  I 
copy  these  verses  .'' '  asked  the  man  ;  and  the  answer  came, 
to  quote  his  words,  '  with  such  a  smile,  "  Any  that  you 
like."  ' 

When  the  lighterman  returned  home,  he  wrote  to  thank 
Stanley  for  the  pleasure  which  he  had  given  him.  By  re- 
turn of  post  came  the  reply  :  '  I  am  truly  thankful  to  have 
explained  anything  in  the  Abbey  to  you.  May  I  ask  you 
to  let  me  know  at  what  time  of  the  day  you  will  come 
again  ? '  '  Thus  began,'  to  use  the  words  of  Mr.  John  Giles, 
the  lighterman,  '  a  working-man's  acquaintance  with  the 
traveller,  the  preacher,  the  teacher  who  drew  all  hearts  to 
him  by  love,  the  dear,  humble  Dean  Stanley.' 


CHAP,  xxm      WORKING-MEN  IN  THE  ABBEY 


309 


Shortly  afterwards  Mr.  Giles  called  at  the  Deanery,  and 
was  shown  into  the  library,  where  he  found  Stanley.  He 
had  himself  lately  read  '  Sinai  and  Palestine,'  and,  refer- 
ring to  it,  sr'id  : 

'  "  How  beautiful  to  have  been  able  to  walk  where  the 
Saviour  had  walked  !  "  I  never  shall  forget  the  answer,  or 
the  look  with  which  it  was  accompanied  :  "  Beautiful  indeed, 
and  not  beyond  the  power  of  any  man,  to  endeavour  to 
walk  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Saviour." 

'  Then  he  asked  me  what  books  I  was  in  the  habit  of 
reading.  I  told  him  several  that  I  had  read,  at  the  same 
time  asking  who  Plato  was,  as  I  had  heard  that  Plato,  al- 
though a  heathen,  had  said  that  he  was  glad  he  was  a  man, 
and  not  a  beast.  He  answered,  that  that  was  a  great  thing 
for  a  heathen  to  have  said,  and  told  me  who  he  was.  He 
seemed  pleased  when  I  said  that  I  had  read  some  of  the  poets, 
naming  Southey,  Hood,  Shakespeare,  Eliza  Cook.  He  said 
that  Southey  was  in  many  ways  often  hard  to  understand. 
Then  he  turned,  and  pointed  to  a  marble  bust,  saying, 
"  That  is  my  dear  wife,  and  that,"  pointing  to  a  portrait,  "  is 
her  brother."  .  .  .  After  some  further  conversation  of  a 
similar  kind,  one  of  the  best  interviews  I  ever  had  with  this 
dear  friend  of  the  people  ended.  As  he  shook  me  by  the 
hand  with  the  grip  of  a  friend,  he  said,  "  Never  come  this 
way  without  calling  upon  me.  I  shall  always  be  glad  to 
see  you."  He  walked  to  the  top  of  the  stairs  with  me,  and 
said  as  I  descended,  "  Good-bye.    God  bless  you  !  "  ' 

Several  similar  interviews  followed  between  the  Dean  and 
Mr.  Giles.  In  May  1881,  shortly  before  his  death,  Stanley 
sent  him  the  Revised  Version  of  the  New  Testament, 
about  which  they  had  often  talked  together.  '  Never,' 
says  Mr.  Giles, 

'do  I  take  that  treasured  gift  in  my  hands  without  thinking 
of  his  words.  We  were  talking  of  favourite  chapters,  and  I 
gave  I  Corinthians  xiii.  —  the  one  on  Charity.  "Yes,"  he 
replied,  "  that  Love  is  grand.  You  will  find  in  the  Revised 
Version  that  Charity  is  Love."  ' 

'  When,'  says  Mr.  Giles,  ending  his  letter  of  recollections, 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STAXLEV 


1880 


'I  saw  the  last  bulletin,  at  10.15  on  the  evening  of  the 
1 8th  day  of  July,  1881,  I  returned  home  with  a  heavy 
heart,  and  said  to  my  good  wife,  "We  shall  never  see  the 
dear  Dean  again  in  this  world.  But  let  us  live  vv'ith  that 
hope  to  meet  him  around  the  throne  of  Jesus,  his  Master, 
Whom  he  loved  to  the  uttermost,  and  Whose  humility  in 
his  everyday  life  he  always  imitated."  And  when,  on  the 
25th  of  July,  I  was  permitted  to  look  upon  the  coffin  that 
contained  the  body  that  had  held  that  piercing  bright  soul, 
I  thanked  God,  with  tearful  eyes,  that  the  dear  good  Dean 
Stanley  was  at  rest  from  his  labours,  and  that  his  works 
still  follow  him.' 

It  was  also  Stanley's  delight  to  take  parties  of  working- 
men  over  the  Abbey  on  Saturday  evenings,  and  afterwards 
to  provide  them  with  tea  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber.  'These 
parties  appear  to  me,'  he  says, 

'  one  of  the  most  useful  purposes  to  which  the  Abbey  can 
be  turned.  They  enable  me  to  encounter  members  of  that 
class  in  the  most  natural  and  easy  way,  and  afford  lasting 
opportunities  of  doing  and  receiving  good  on  both  sides.' 

Both  visitors  and  guide  learned  something  from  each 
other.  '  On  passing  by  the  tomb  of  Sir  Cloudesley  Shovel,' 
writes  Stanley, 

'  a  working-man  told  me  an  incident  that  I  never  heard  from 
anyone  else  —  that  he  derived  his  name  from  the  humble 
origin  from  which  he  sprang ;  for,  said  my  working  friend, 
it  was  so  humble  that  he  was  taken  with  a  shovel  out  of  a 
heap  of  ashes,  and  he  was  called  Shovel  from  the  instrument 
then  used,  and  Cloudesley  from  the  filthy  and  cloudy  ap- 
pearance which  he  presented  on  that  occasion.' 

These  opportunities  were  warmly  appreciated  by  those 
who  enjoyed  them.  One  illustration  out  of  many  must 
suffice.  '  A  Working  Man  '  *  has  written  his  recollections  of 
two  visits  to  the  Abbey  wliich  he  and  others  paid  in  1870 

*'A  Working  Man's  Recollections  of  the  late  Dean  and  Lady  Augusta 
Stanley,'  by  Geo.  R.  Humphery,  Librarian  and  Hon.  Sec.  of  Messrs.  P".  Braby 
and  Co.'s  Library,  Deptford  (^Hoiise  and  Home,  May  iQlh  and  June  23rd, 
1882). 


CHAP.  XXIII 


A  WORKING-MAN'S  RECOLLECTIONS 


and  1879,  and  of  the  teas  which  followed  in  the  Jerusalem 
Chamber.  Mr.  Humphery's  first  interview  with  Stanley 
was  on  May  28,  1870. 

'Having  introduced  himself  and  Lady  Augusta  Stanley 
to  us,  and  expressed  his  great  pleasure  in  meeting  us,  he 
drew  me  on  one  side,  and  said,  "  Are  there  any  Roman 
Catholics  in  your  party I  replied,  "  Not  that  I  am  aware 
of;  but  there  are  a  few  of  no  Church."  "Because,"  he 
added,  "  in  any  description  I  may  give  I  should  not  like  to 
hurt  the  feelings  of  anyone."  I  at  once  concluded  that 
none  but  a  great  man  would  be  so  thoughtful  of  the  feelings 
of  others,  or  so  candid  in  expressing  his  solicitude  for  the 
same.  This  was  my  brief  introduction  to  one  of  the  best 
friends  of  the  working-classes,  and  a  friend  my  class  can 
ill  afford  to  lose.  We  spent  the  afternoon  with  the  Dean 
and  her  Ladyship,  each  of  whom  vied  with  the  other  in 
contributing  to  the  enjoyment  and  adding  to  the  informa- 
tion of  our  party,  and  few  of  those  present  will  forget  their 
kindness.' 

From  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  through  the  nave,  side- 
chapels,  and  choir  of  the  Abbey,  through  Henry  VH.'s 
Chapel,  and  by  Poets'  Corner,  the  party  were  guided  by 
the  Dean  and  his  wife,  and  it  was  evident,  says  Mr. 
Humphery,  'that  he  had  thoroughly  enlisted  the  sympathy 
of  the  party;  they  crowded  round  him,  so  that  not  a  word 
should  be  lost,  while  her  Ladyship  kindly  kept  the  fringe 
of  the  party  informed  of  anything  imperfectly  heard.  All 
listened  with  rapt  attention  to  his  panoramic  description 
of  England  and  her  Abbey.' 

On  the  second  visit,  on  June  15th,  1879, 

'  the  Dean  arrived,  having  left  an  interesting  meeting  at 
Lord  Mount  Temple's  to  keep  his  engagement  with  us  ; 
showing  by  that  that  he  recognised  good  to  be  done  before 
personal  enjoyment.  We  were  greeted  with  the  usual 
welcome  and  expression  of  delight ;  but  we  were  pained  to 
observe  that  suffering,  mental  or  physical,  or  both,  had  laid 
a  heavy  hand  upon  our  dear  friend.  Never  a  robust  frame, 
he  appeared  much  weaker.    The  lines  in  the  face  were 


312 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


more  deeply  marked.  Those  who  knew  him  were  distressed 
at  the  noticeable  alteration,  fearing  greatly  that  his  labours 
here  were  fast  drawing  to  a  close.' 

He  guided  the  party  through  the  Abbey  with  the  same 
contagious  enthusiasm  and  the  same  power  of  awakening 
and  sustaining  the  interest  of  others.  But  he  was  now 
alone.  Never  able  to  approach  the  spot  where  his  wife 
lay  without  a  change  in  his  step,  which  his  companion 
could  not  fail  to  recognise,  he  could  not  guide  the  party  to 
her  grave. 

'  Following  the  Dean,  we  were  again  assembled  in 
Henry  VH.'s  Chapel,  and  having  formed  a  half-circle  in 
front  of  that  monarch's  tomb,  our  guide,  supporting  himself 
against  the  masonry,  said,  "  If  you  go  round  this  tomb  you 
will  see  where  she  lies.  I  have  had  printed  a  description 
of  the  windows.  The  law  of  burial  in  this  place  is  very 
curious.  This  Chapel  is  for  the  Royal  family  and  their 
friends,  subject  to  the  consent  of  the  Dean-in-charge,  who, 
in  his  turn,  cannot  bury  there  without  the  permission  of 
the  sovereign.  I  have  the  power  to  prevent  anyone  being 
interred  here.  This  is  very  peculiar,  but  illustrates  the 
English  people's  respect  for  rights.  There  was  no  difficulty 
in  this  case.  Her  Majesty  sending  the  necessary  permission 
without  being  asked."  Having  with  considerable  effort 
thus  spoken,  he  added,  with  great  difficulty,  "  You  will  find 
it  round  there  ;  you  will  find  a  description  on  the  tomb."  ' 

So  deep  was  the  impression  made  upon  the  minds  of 
the  workmen  by  the  kindness  and  hospitality  of  Stanley  that 

'  they  consulted  how  best  to  give  expression  to  their 
strong  sense  of  gratitude.  Permission  was  therefore  asked 
to  place  a  floral  wreath  on  the  grave  of  Lady  Augusta 
Stanley.  A  well  designed  and  executed  wreath  and  cross 
were  purchased,  and  these  small  visible  recognitions  of  the 
valuable  work  of  her  Ladyship  and  the  Dean  were  placed 
upon  her  tomb  on  the  afternoon  of  Saturday,  November 
30th,  1879,  as  an  expression  of  the  deepest  gratitude  and 
appreciation  of  the  eminent  services  rendered  to  us,  and 
the  working-classes  generally.' 


CHAP.  XXIII 


THE  TWO  SOLDIERS 


Another  illustration  may  be  given  of  the  use  which 
Stanley  made  of  these  opportunities  of  talking  with  working- 
men.  In  1882,  at  Bletchley  Station,  a  gentleman  travelling 
from  Norwich  to  Liverpool  entered  a  third-class  smoking- 
compartment,  which  had  as  its  other  occupants  two  soldiers 
and  two  civilians.    '  We  were,'  he  said,  in  telling  the  story, 

'  a  very  quiet  party :  one  of  the  soldiers  was  reading  a 
tract,  the  other  was  smoking  a  clay  pipe,  the  two  civilians 
were  dozing.  I  was  trying  to  decipher  the  title  of  the 
tract,  or,  if  possible,  to  get  into  conversation  with  the  reader 
of  it,  who  sat  opposite  to  me.  At  Rugby  the  two  civilians 
left  us,  and  as  the  train  passed  out  of  the  station  the  reader 
of  the  tract  said  to  the  other  soldier,  "  Mate,  hand  us  the 
pipe,  and  take  a  spell  at  Wycliffe." 

'  I  then  found  they  had  but  one  pipe  between  them,  and 
when  no  match  could  be  found  my  opportunity  came,  and 
I  proffered  a  light,  at  the  same  time  asking  how  it  was  that 
one  pipe  had  to  do  duty  for  both  of  them,  and  what  was 
the  tract  that  seemed  to  interest  them  so  much.  I  learnt 
that  their  other  pipe  had  been  broken  just  before  reaching 
Bletchley,  and  that  the  tract  was  "  Wycliffe  and  the  Bible." 
They  had  each  read  it  twice,  and  begged  me  to  accept  it, 
as  it  was    so  good  everybody  should  read  it." 

'  "  Where  is  your  home  "  I  asked. 

' "  Chester,  sir." 

'I  said,  "I,  too,  am  from  a  cathedral  city  —  the  city  of 
Norwich." 

'"Norwich!"  both  of  them  exclaimed,  "why,  that's 
where  Dean  Stanley  lived  !  " 

'"Yes,"  I  said,  "but  what  do  you  know  about  Dean 
Stanley .? " 

'  I  shall  never  forget  the  expression  of  the  face  turned 
towards  me,  as  the  speaker  said,  "Me  and  my  mate  here 
have  cause  to  bless  the  Lord  that  we  ever  saw  good  Dean 
Stanley,  sir,  I  can  tell  you." 

'Then  they  recounted  to  me  how  some  years  before, 
when  they  had  been  at  Shoeburyness  for  gunnery  practice, 
they  were  released  from  duty  a  day  earlier  than  they  ex- 
pected, and  instead  of  starting  for  home  they  decided  to 
spend  the  day  in  London.  In  carrying  out  this  decision 
they  found  themselves  at  the  Abbey  just  as  the  doors  were 


314 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


locked,  and  they  turned  to  retrace  their  steps  with  deep  dis- 
appointment, which  found  expression  in  the  words  :  "  Here 
we  have  been  fooling  about  all  day  sight-seeing,  and  have 
missed  the  best  sight  of  all — we  shall  go  home  without  seeing 
the  inside  of  the  Abbey,  the  place  we  most  wanted  to  see. 

'"Our  words  and  disappointed  looks,"  continued  my 
friend,  "attracted  the  notice  of  a  gentleman,  who  ap- 
proached us  and  said,  '  You  very  much  wish  to  see  the 
inside  of  the  Abbey,  do  you?  Well,  can't  you  come  to- 
morrow ? ' 

' "  '  No,  sir,  we  must  be  at  Chester  to-morrow,  and  if  we 
don't  see  inside  the  Abbey  to-day,  it's  not  likely  we  ever 
shall.' 

' "  With  this  the  gentleman  invited  us  to  go  with  him, 
and,  taking  the  keys  from  the  beadle,  he  entered  with  us 
into  the  Abbey,  walking  by  our  side,  and  pointing  out  to 
us  the  things  most  worth  seeing.  Presently  he  came  to  a 
marble  monument  erected  to  one  of  our  soldiers,  and,  as  we 
stood  looking  at  it  in  admiration,  the  gentleman  said,  '  You 
wear  the  uniform  of  Her  Majesty,  and  I  daresay  would  like 
to  do  some  heroic  deed  worthy  of  a  monument  like  this.' 

'  "  We  both  said,  yes,  we  should  —  when,  laying  his  hand 
on  each  of  us,  he  said  :  '  My  friends,  you  may  both  have  a 
more  enduring  monument  than  this,  for  this  will  moulder 
into  dust,  and  be  forgotten  ;  but  yoii,  if  your  names  are  writ- 
ten in  the  "Lamb's  Book  of  Life,"  jft'?/ will  abide  forever.' 

'  "  We  neither  of  us  understood  what  he  meant  —  but  we 
looked  into  his  grave,  earnest,  loving  face  with  queer  feel- 
ings in  our  hearts,  and  moved  on.  Just  as  we  were  leaving 
the  Abbey,  our  guide  told  us  he  was  the  Dean,  and  invited 
us  to  the  Deanery  to  breakfast  next  morning.  We  did 
not  forget  to  go,  I  can  assure  you,  and  after  breakfast  the 
Dean  came  to  say  good-bye.  He  gave  us  money  enough 
to  pay  our  fares  to  Chester,  and  once  again,  in  earnest, 
loving  tones,  he  told  us  to  be  sure  and  get  our  names  writ- 
ten in  the  Lamb's  Book  of  Life,  and  then,  if  we  never  met 
again  on  earth,  we  should  meet  in  Heaven. 

'  "  And  so  we  parted  v/ith  the  Dean  ;  and  as  we  travelled 
home  we  talked  about  our  visit  to  the  Abbey,  and  puzzled 
much  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  Lamb's  Book  of  Life."' 

It  will  be  enough  to  say  that  those  words  proved  the 
turning-point  in  the  lives  of  those  two  men  and  their  wives, 


CHAr.  XXIII 


HIS  OWN  SERMONS 


and  that,  as  one  of  them  said,  '  We  trust  that  our  names 
are  written  in  the  Book  of  Life,  and  that  we  may  some  day, 
in  God's  good  time,  meet  Dean  Stanley  in  heaven.' 

Still  wider  opportunities  of  influencing  others  were 
enjoyed  by  Stanley  as  a  preacher.  It  is  especially  in  his 
sermons  written  on  the  deaths  of  illustrious  persons,  or  on 
events  of  historical  importance,  that  his  powers  are  most 
strikingly  exemplified.  Here  the  same  gifts  which,  in  their 
simpler  form,  were  used  to  attract  and  sustain  the  interest 
of  children,  or  to  give  life  to  the  Beatitudes  by  teaching 
them  through  history,  or  to  win  the  hearts  of  working-men 
whom  he  accidentally  encountered  in  the  Abbey,  are  ex- 
panded in  a  more  carefully  elaborated  shape. 

Stanley's  official  duties  as  Dean  only  required  him  to 
preach  three  or  four  times  in  every  year ;  but  the  special 
circumstances  of  the  Chapter  gave  him  frequent  oppor- 
tunities of  occupying  the  Abbey  pulpit,  and  Sunday  after 
Sunday  he  attracted  congregations  which  few  preachers  of 
the  day  could  have  gathered  together.  He  had  not  the 
oratorical  power  of  Samuel  Wilberforce,  nor  was  he  eloquent 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word ;  but  he  was  almost  in- 
variably interesting  and  suggestive.  He  seldom  preached 
a  sermon  which  did  not  impress  upon  his  hearers  some  pure 
and  practically  useful  thought,  with  every  accompaniment 
of  the  literary  skill,  the  picturesque  language,  the  felicitous 
illustration,  the  appropriate  metaphor,  and  the  pointed 
anecdote  that  could  fix  it  in  the  memory.  Always  emi- 
nently himself  in  preaching,  his  sermons  exhibited  the 
closest  resemblance  to  the  natural  man.  They  had  the 
charm  of  illustrating  his  invincible  habit  of  making  the  best 
of  others,  and  of  seeking  the  good  in  everything  ;  the  large 
charity  which  loved  to  rise  above  discord  into  the  freer 
atmosphere  of  union  ;  the  quiet,  filial  trust  in  the  Divine 
purpose,  in  which  he  himself  lived  ;  the  enthusiasm  for 


3i6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


everything  true,  and  pure,  and  lovely,  and  of  good  report, 
which  was  the  potent  charm  of  his  social  presence. 

A  man  who  preached  so  much  could  not  always  be  at 
his  best.  He  was  necessarily  unequal.  Accustomed  to 
deliver  the  same  sermons  again  and  again,  he  lost  the 
freshness  of  his  interest  in  what  he  was  saying,  and  com- 
municated the  loss  even  to  hearers  to  whom  the  matter 
was  new.  New  passages,  interpolated  at  different  times, 
were  written  in  every  corner  and  between  the  lines  of  the 
original  text,  in  a  hand  always  difficult  to  decipher ;  mys- 
terious signs  in  red  ink  obscurely  indicated  the  place  at 
which  they  were  to  be  introduced ;  and  the  result  was  that 
at  times  the  preacher  either  lost  his  way,  or  was  so  absorbed 
in  finding  it  as  to  lose  his  energy  of  delivery.  But  in  the 
sermons  written  for  special  occasions  these  peculiar  diffi- 
culties vanished.  The  manuscript  was  comparatively  clear, 
the  preacher  deeply  interested ;  his  voice,  his  manner,  his 
tones  were  full  of  energy  and  animation.  The  topics  were 
new :  they  appealed  to  his  historical  and  biographical 
interests ;  they  stimulated  to  its  highest  activity  his  in- 
stinct for  detecting  in  the  services  of  the  day  the  happiest 
guide  for  the  subjects  of  his  discourse  ;  they  afforded  scope 
to  his  habit  of  detecting  parallels  or  distinctions  ;  they  gave 
play  to  his  genius  for  seizing  on  crucial  points  in  situations 
or  characters  ;  they  served  as  the  stepping-stones  by  which 
he  traversed  the  river  of  time,  and  made  one  territory  of 
sacred  and  profane  history,  of  things  secular  and  spiritual, 
of  the  events  recorded  in  the  Bible  and  the  events  that 
excited  the  interests  of  the  England  of  the  day.  On  occa- 
sions such  as  those  of  the  Siege  of  Paris,  or  the  deaths  of 
Charles  Dickens,  Frederick  Maurice,  or  Charles  Kingsley, 
he  rose  to  the  highest  levels  of  eloquence. 

Even  through  these  memorial  sermons  there  runs  that 
remarkable  thread  of   unity  which  gave  such  life  and 


CHAP.  XXIII  HIS  MEMORIAL  SERMONS 


enthusiasm  to  his  literary  work.  The  lives  that  he  com- 
memorated preached  the  thoughts  which  he  never  wearied 
of  enforcing.  With  telling  effect  he  quotes  the  will  of 
Charles  Dickens,^  heard  for  the  first  time,  by  most  of  his 
hearers,  from  the  pulpit  of  Westminster  Abbey  on  June 
19th,  1870  : 

'  I  commit  my  soul  to  the  mercy  of  God,  through  our 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ ;  and  I  exhort  my  dear 
children  humbly  to  try  and  guide  themselves  by  the  teach- 
ing of  the  New  Testament  in  its  broad  spirit,  and  to  put 
no  faith  in  any  man's  narrow  construction  of  its  letter  here 
or  there.' 

The  death  of  Sir  John  Herschel^  supplied,  as  it  were, 
a  text  from  which  to  preach  on  the  true  reconciliation  of 
Science  and  Religion,  '  the  danger  of  mistrusting,  even  for 
a  moment,  the  grand  and  only  character  of  Truth  —  its 
capability  of  coming  unchanged  out  of  every  possible  form 
of  fair  discussion.' 

'  How  many  a  cobweb  of  fine-spun  folly,  how  many  an 
imaginary  distinction  of  metaphysics,  how  many  a  scho- 
lastic entanglement,  how  many  a  baneful  superstition,  has 
vanished  before  the  touch  of  this  Ithuriel's  spear  of 
scientific  research !  How  firm  a  grasp  of  reality,  how 
strong  and  fresh  a  belief  in  the  possibility  of  knowledge 
and  certainty,  how  just  a  sense  of  the  difference  between 
false,  artificial  authority,  and  true,  natural  authority  can  be 
given  to  the  least  scientific  of  us  by  such  an  interpretation 
of  science  as  that  which  has  in  these  latter  days  been 
afforded  to  us!  This  is  no  subtraction  from  any  theology 
which  deserves  the  name.  It  is  giving  new  meaning  to  its 
words,  new  bounds  to  its  domain,  new  life  to  its  skeleton.' 

The  death  of  George  Grote gave  him  the  opportunity 

*  'Charles  Dickens.'  Preached  on  June  19th,  1870.  Reprinted  in  Sermons 
on  Special  Occasions. 

'•'Science  and  Religion.'  Preached  on  May  21st,  1871.  Reprinted  in 
Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 

■^'The  Religious  Aspect  of  History.'  Preached  on  June  25th,  1871. 
Reprinted  in  Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 


3l8  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864-81 

of  pleading  for  the  religious  aspect  of  all  history,  whether 
sacred  or  profane. 

'  Of  the  three  great  manifestations  of  God  to  man  in 
Nature,  in  conscience,  in  the  course  of  human  events, 
"  God  in  history  "  will,  to  a  large  part  of  mankind,  be  the 
most  persuasive.  On  the  great  scale  of  the  world's  move- 
ments we  see  impressed  the  "unceasing  purpose"  of  the 
Creator  ;  on  the  smaller  scale  of  the  lives  of  heroes,  saints, 
and  sages,  we  see  the  highest  efforts  of  the  Creature. 

'  Doctrine,  precept,  warning,  exhortation,  all  are  in- 
vested with  double  charms  when  clothed'  in  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  historical  facts.  If  there  has  been  an  "everlasting 
remembrance  "  of  One  supremely  just,  in  whom  the  Divine 
Mind  was  made  known  to  man  in  a  special  and  transcen- 
dent degree,  it  is  because  that  Just  One,  the  Holy  and  the 
True,  became  "  flesh  and  dwelt  amongst  us,"  and  became 
(so  let  us  speak  with  all  reverence  and  all  truth)  the  subject 
of  historical  description,  of  historical  analysis,  of  historical 
comparison.' 

As  he  gathers  the  noble  army  of  travellers  round  the 
grave  of  Livingstone,^  it  is  to  repeat  the  words  of  the 
famous  explorer,  that  he  '  never,  as  a  missionary,  felt  him- 
self bound  to  be  either  Presbyterian,  Episcopalian,  or 
Independent,  or  called  upon  in  any  way  to  love  one 
denomination  less  than  another.'  In  Frederick  Maurice^ 
he  sees  a  teacher  whose  life  was  one  of  constant  warfare 
for  fallen  causes  and  forgotten  truths,  but  who  yet  remained 
the  most  peaceful,  the  most  pacific,  and  the  most  peace- 
making of  men.    And  the  secret  of  this  he  finds  in  his 

'trust,  absolute,  unbroken,  yet  with  a  perfect  understanding 
of  what  he  believed,  in  the  greatness  and  goodness  of  God, 
and  of  God's  dealings  with  the  whole  race  of  mankind. 
The  religions  of  the  world  were  all,  to  him,  manifestations, 
more  or  less  imperfect,  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ. 
The  various  developments  of  the  Christian  Church  were 

8 'The  Mission  of  the  Traveller.'  Preached  April  19th,  1874.  Reprinted 
in  Sermons  on  Speciiil  Occasions. 

*  '  Frederick  Denison  Maurice.'  Preached  on  April  7th,  1872.  Reprinted 
in  Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 


CHAP,  xxia         HIS  MEMORIAL  SERMONS 


319 


all,  to  him,  various  provinces  of  the  Kingdom  of  Christ. 
The  threefold  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost,  was  not  to  him  a  dark  insoluble  mystery,  but  a 
glorious  revelation  of  the  depths  of  the  moral  being  of 
God.  Believing  in  the  truth  of  this  revelation  as  positively 
as  the  strictest  Pharisee  or  fanatic  of  any  Jewish  or  Chris- 
tian sect,  he  could  afford  to  be  as  reverent  as  he  was  free, 
as  fearlessly  bold  as  he  was  perfectly  humble ;  he  was 
not,  he  could  not  be,  afraid  of  any  evil  tidings,  of  any  in- 
quiry, of  any  research,  for  his  heart  stood  fast,  and  believed 
in  the  eternal  God.' 

In  Charles  Kingsley  he  found  a  human  contradiction 
to  that  false  distinction  between  the  secular  and  the 
spiritual,  between  the  Church  and  the  world,  which,  as 
he  believed,  had  stunted  rather  than  forwarded  the  upward 
growth  of  the  spirit  of  man  towards  its  Divine  original. 
He  saw  also,  and  above  all  else,  in  the  poet,  scholar,  and 
novelist,  a  spiritual  teacher  and  guide.  On  two  points,  as 
it  seemed  to  him,  Kingslcy  laid  special  stress.  To  illus- 
trate the  first  he  quotes  his  strenuous  insistence  on  the  fact 

'  that  the  main  part  of  the  religion  of  mankind  and  of 
.Christendom  should  consist  in  the  strict  fulfilment  of  the 
duty  of  man,  which  is  the  will  of  God.  "  The  first  and 
last  business  of  every  living  being,  whatever  his  station, 
party,  creed,  tastes,  duties,  is  Morality.  Virtue,  virtue, 
always  virtue  !  "  ' 

The  second  point  was  'faith  that  God  is  good,  and  that 
man,  to  be  well-pleasing  to  God,  must  be  good  also.'  In 
illustration  of  this  he  quotes  the  following  passage  from 
Kingsley's  sermons  : 

*  See  whether  in  the  light  of  that  one  idea  of  an  abso- 
lutely good  God  all  the  old-fashioned  Christian  ideas  about 
the  relations  of  God  to  man — whether  a  Providence, 
Prayer,  Inspiration,  Revelation  ;  the  Incarnation,  the  Pas- 
sion, and  the  final  triumph  of  the  Son  of  God  —  whether 

1"  '  Charles  Kingsley.'  Preached  on  January  31st,  1875.  Reprinted  in 
Sermons  011  Special  Occasions. 


320 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-81 


all  these,  I  say,  do  not  begin  to  seem  to  you,  not  merely 
beautiful,  not  merely  probable,  but  rational  and  logical 
and  necessary  moral  consequences  from  the  one  idea  of 
an  Absolute  and  Eternal  Goodness,  the  Living  Parent  of 
the  Universe.' 

These  sermons  on  special  occasions,  in  which  his  powers 
as  a  preacher  were  most  strikingly  exemplified,  are  closely 
connected  with  that  part  of  Stanley's  administration  of 
the  Abbey  which  provoked  most  criticism.  If,  in  opening 
Westminster  as  the  place  of  interment  for  illustrious  per- 
sons, he  sometimes  erred  on  the  side  of  too  great  a  lati- 
tude of  inclusion,  it  was  at  least  a  characteristic  fault,  due 
partly  to  his  ungrudging  admiration  of  the  great  qualities 
of  his  contemporaries,  partly  to  his  historical  attitude 
towards  events  of  his  time,  partly  to  his  anxiety  that  no 
link  should  be  dropped  in  the  chain  which  bound  the  his- 
tory of  England  to  Westminster  Abbey. 

During  Stanley's  tenure  of  the  Deanery  there  were 
fifteen  interments  in  the  Abbey.  The  following  are  the 
names :  Algernon  Duke  of  Northumberland,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston,  Charles  Dickens,  George  Peabody  (temporary),  Sir 
John  Herschel,  George  Grote,  Sir  George  Pollock,  Lord 
Lytton,  Dr.  Livingstone,  Sir  Sterndale  Bennett,  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  Bishop  Thirlwall,  Lord  Lawrence,  Sir  Rowland  Hill, 
Lord  Henry  Percy.  Of  these  fifteen,  the  first  and  the 
last  were  buried  by  prescriptive  right  in  the  Percy  Chapel, 
and  the  Dean's  consent  was  not  asked,  but  demanded. 
In  the  case  of  Lord  Palmerston,  the  responsibility  was 
assumed  by  the  Government  of  1865.  Sir  George  Pollock 
was  buried  in  the  Abbey  during  Stanley's  absence  from 
England,  and  without  his  concurrence.  The  claims  of  Sir 
Rowland  Hill  were  forced  upon  him,  against  his  will,  by 
the  public  press.  One  interment,  that  of  George  Peabody, 
the   American    philanthropist,    was    only   a  temporary 


CHAP.  XXIII       INTERMENTS  IN  THE  ABBEY 


321 


arrangement,  the  body  being  removed  in  the  following 
year  to  Salem,  Massachusetts. 

Between  the  years  1864  and  188 1,  therefore,  there  were 
nine  interments  in  the  Abbey  for  which  Stanley  was 
responsible,  and  in  no  one  instance  did  he  himself  take  the 
initiative  in  proposing  the  burial  in  Westminster  Abbey 
to  the  relatives  of  the  deceased.  In  each  case,  as  it  arose, 
he  only  acted  upon  a  requisition  signed  by  distinguished 
specialists  of  the  day.  The  case  of  Lord  Lytton  was  the 
only  one  which  seemed  doubtful.  But  his  great  European 
reputation,  his  combination  of  public  ofifice  with  literary 
distinction,  and  the  great  variety  of  his  attainments,  ap- 
peared to  Stanley  to  justify  an  honour  which  no  one 
point,  taken  singly,  could  have  procured.  Lord  Lytton 
was  buried,  it  may  be  added,  not  in  Poets'  Corner,  but  in 
a  side-chapel,  in  which,  in  allusion  to  his  being  a  Hertford- 
shire man  and  the  author  of  '  The  Last  of  the  Barons,'  he 
was  laid  by  the  side  of  Humphrey  Bourchier,  who  fell  at 
the  battle  of  Barnet,  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses. 

This  general  statement  of  Stanley's  rule  of  action  would 
be  sufficient,  if  it  were  not  for  the  hostile  criticism  which 
his  supposed  conduct  aroused  in  the  case  of  Charles 
Dickens,  the  first  funeral  in  the  Abbey  for  which  Stanley 
was  responsible.  Stanley  had  not  known  Dickens  till  the 
year  of  his  death.  In  that  year  he  had  three  times  met  him 
—  once  at  a  private  party,  where  he  had  been  greatly  struck 
by  his  conversational  powers  ;  once  at  the  Academy  Dinner, 
where  he  made,  on  Maclise,  Stanley  says,  '  one  of  the  only 
three  good  speeches  that  I  remember  to  have  heard  on  the 
occasion,  much  coveted  and  sought  after,  of  that  Dinner' ; 

'1  Of  the  two  other  speeches,  one  was  made  by  Lord  Derby,  whose  trans- 
lation of  Homer  had  recently  appeared;  the  other  by  Matthew  Arnold,  who 
described  the  one  day  in  the  year  in  which  a  Grecian  colony  in  Calabria 
resumed  their  Grecian  customs,  and  returned  for  a  few  hours  to  the  days  of 
art  and  poetry. 

VOL.  II  Y 


322 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


and  once,  a  few  weeks  before  the  novelist's  death,  he 
dined  with  Stanley  himself  at  the  Deanery.  Charles 
Dickens  died  on  J-une  6th,  1870.  Stanley  at  once  sent 
an  intimation  through  a  friend  that,  if  an  application 
for  the  novelist's  interment  in  the  Abbey  were  made  to 
him,  he  would  gladly  consider  it.  It  was,  however,  in- 
tended to  bury  Dickens,  whose  will  prescribed,  in  the 
strictest  manner,  the  absolute  plainness  of  his  funeral,  in 
the  graveyard  of  Rochester  Cathedral.  But  this  intention 
was  abandoned  in  consequence  of  an  Order  of  the  Privy 
Council,  which  had  closed  the  churchyard  as  a  place  of 
public  interment.  The  death  occurred  on  Friday ;  Satur- 
day and  Sunday  passed,  but  no  request  was  made.  On 
Monday,  June  9th,  there  appeared  in  the  'Times  '  an  elab- 
orate leading-article,  strongly  recommending  a  funeral  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  as  the  one  place  which  was  fitting 
to  receive  a  writer  of  such  distinction.  As,  however,  no 
application  had  arrived  from  anyone  in  authority,  Stanley 
took  no  further  steps. 

'  At  eleven  o'clock  on  Monday  morning  arrived  Mr. 
Forster,  the  future  biographer  of  Dickens,  accompanied 
by  the  son  of  the  deceased  novelist.  Mr.  Forster  said, 
"  I  imagine  that  the  article  in  the  '  Times '  must  have 
been  written  with  your  concurrence  "  I  replied,  "  No  ; 
I  had  no  concern  with  it ;  but  at  the  same  time  I  had 
given  it  privately  to  be  understood  that  I  would  consent 
to  the  interment  if  it  was  demanded."  The  letter  had,  it 
seemed,  gone  astray,  and  it  was  only  on  the  expression  of 
public  feeling  in  the  "Times"  that  they  had  ventured  to 
apply.  I  said,  "  After  this  strong  expression  in  the 
'Times,'  of  course  all  further  solicitation  is  unnecessary, 
and  I  at  once  consent." 

'  Mr.  Forster  replied,  "  Do  not  consent  till  you  hear 
what  are  the  conditions  on  which  alone  I  can  allow  it."  I 
answered,  "Let  me  hear  them."  Mr.  Forster  said,  "The 
first  condition  is,  that  there  shall  be  only  two  mourning- 
coaches,  with  mourners  sufficient  to  fill  them."  "That," 
I  said,  "  is  entirely  an  affair  of  the  family  ;  do  as  you  like." 


CHAP.  XXIII 


CHARLES  DICKENS 


"The  second  condition  is,  that  there  shall  be  no  plumes, 
trappings,  or  funereal  pomp  of  any  kind."  "  That,"  I  replied, 
"  is  a  matter  between  you  and  the  undertaker,  and  is  no 
concern  of  mine."  "The  third  condition  is,  that  the  place 
and  time  of  the  interment  shall  be  unknown  beforehand." 
I  replied,  "  To  this  condition  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  con- 
sent so  far  as  I  am  concerned.  But  look  at  the  circum- 
stances :  a  leading-article  in  the  '  Times '  requesting  his 
burial ;  a  public  —  by  this,  as  well  as  by  their  own  feel- 
ings—  on  the  tiptoe  of  expectation  ;  the  remains,  now  at 
Rochester,  to  be  removed  to  London.  How  is  it  possible, 
under  these  circumstances,  to  preserve  the  secret "  ' 

It  was  finally  arranged  that  the  body  of  Charles 
Dickens  should  be  brought  from  Rochester  to  London 
that  night ;  that,  as  soon  as  the  last  sightseer  had  left  the 
Abbey,  the  grave  should  be  dug  in  Poets'  Corner,  and  that 
the  mourners  were  to  arrive  at  nine  o'clock  the  following 
morning,  so  that  the  funeral  might  take  place  before  the 
ordinary  morning  service.  By  the  dim  light  on  Monday 
evening  Stanley  chose  the  spot  for  the  grave  in  Poets'  Cor- 
ner, close  to  Thackeray's  bust,  and  surrounded  by  the 
graves  of  Handel,  Cumberland,  and  Sheridan.  During  the 
night  the  grave  was  dug.  At  nine  o'clock  on  Tuesday 
morning  a  solitary  hearse,  with  two  mourning-coaches, 
drove  into  Dean's  Yard  without  attracting  any  attention 
whatever.  In  the  Abbey,  Stanley  and  the  other  ofificiating 
clergy  were  waiting.  The  coffin  was  carried  to  Poets'  Cor- 
ner, accompanied  by  ten  or  twelve  mourners,  and  lowered 
into  the  grave  in  the  presence  of  these  few  spectators.  '  It 
was,'  writes  Stanley, 

'a  beautiful  summer  morning,  and  the  effect  of  the  almost 
silent  and  solitary  funeral,  in  the  vast  space  of  the  Abbey, 
of  this  famous  writer,  whose  interment,  had  it  been  known, 
would  have  drawn  thousands  to  the  Abbey,  was  very 
striking.  As  the  small  procession  quitted  the  Church  I 
asked  Mr.  Forster,  as  it  would  be  so  great  a  disappoint- 
ment to  the  public,  whether  he  would  allow  the  grave  to 


324 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1879-80 


be  open  for  the  remainder  of  that  day.  He  said,  "  Yes  ; 
now  my  work  is  over,  and  you  may  do  what  you  like." 
The  usual  service  was  at  ten  o'clock.  At  eleven  o'clock 
there  arrived  reporters  from  every  newspaper  in  London, 
requesting  to  know  when  the  funeral  would  take  place.  I 
told  them  it  was  over.  Meantime  the  rumour  had  spread, 
and  during  that  day  there  were  thousands  of  people  who 
came  to  see  the  grave.  Every  class  of  the  community 
was  present,  dropping  in  flowers,  verses,  and  memorials  of 
every  kind,  and,  some  of  them  quite  poor  people,  shedding 
tears.' 

The  storm  of  abuse  excited  by  the  proposal  to  erect  a 
monument  in  Westminster  Abbey  to  the  Prince  imperial 
exceeded  in  violence  the  murmurs  aroused  by  the  inter- 
ment of  Dickens.  The  tragic  incidents  of  the  Prince's 
death  in  the  Zulu  War  on  June  ist,  1879,  evoked  a  sym- 
pathy which  was  exceptional  in  character  and  almost  uni- 
versal in  extent.  That  the  heir  of  the  Napoleons  should 
fall  as  an  English  soldier  by  the  hands  of  savages  was  a 
coincidence  as  strange,  as  suggestive,  and  as  full  of  pathos 
as  any  of  which  a  poet,  a  historian,  or  a  novelist,  could 
have  conceived  the  occurrence.  When,  therefore,  on  the 
day  before  the  funeral,  Stanley  received  an  application  from 
an  influential  committee  to  erect  a  monument  to  the  Prince's 
memory,  he  at  once  consented,  subject  to  the  approval  of 
Her  Majesty,  in  whose  royal  chapel  of  King  Henry  VH. 
the  proposed  recumbent  figure  was  intended  to  be  placed. 
The  manifestation  of  public  sympathy  had  been  so  un- 
usual that  he  had  no  doubt  of  the  propriety  of  acceding 
to  the  request.  The  tragic  associations  of  the  fall  of  a 
Prince  who  gave  his  life  for  the  country  which  had  received 
him  as  a  guest,  and  which  had  learned  to  respect  his 
character,  gave  him  a  claim,  as  Stanley  thought,  to  be 
ranked  among  those  princes  to  whom  Westminster  Abbey 
has,  at  various  times,  given  shelter  or  admitted  memorials. 


CHAP.  XXIII    MONUMENT  TO  PRINCE  IMPERIAL  325 


The  spot  chosen  by  Stanley  for  the  monument  was 
not  in  the  Abbey  Church  properly  so  called,  but  in  the 
royal  chapel  appended  to  it,  in  which,  as  a  general  rule,  no 
persons  are  interred  or  commemorated  except  members  of 
the  Royal  Family,  or  persons  specially  connected  with 
them.  And  in  Henry  VII. 's  Chapel  the  particular  locality 
was  suggested  by  a  significant  fact.  In  a  chapel  on  the 
south-eastern  side  was  interred  the  Duke  of  Montpensier, 
brother  of  King  Louis  Philippe,  who  died  at  Salt-hill,  in  1 807, 
during  the  first  exile  of  the  Bourbon  family  from  France.  In 
the  corresponding  chapel  on  the  north-east  side  Stanley  now 
proposed  to  place  the  monument  to  another  Prince  belong- 
ing to  a  rival  dynasty,  but  exiled  from,  and  finding  a 
refuge  in,  the  same  country.  The  Abbey,  as  he  always 
delighted  to  remember,  knew  no  distinctions  of  politics, 
foreign  or  domestic.  It  was,  as  Macaulay  described  it, 
'the  great  temple  of  silence  and  reconciliation.'  No  asso- 
ciation excited  greater  interest  than  the  tombs  of  Elizabeth 
and  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  within  the  same  walls.  In  the 
analogous  correspondence  between  the  monuments  to 
chieftains  of  the  Bourbon  and  Napoleonic  dynasties  he 
saw  another  example  of  the  cherished  characteristic  of  the 
national  burial-place,  another  link  in  the  invisible  chain  of 
hospitality  and  charity  which  stretches  across  the  widest 
gulfs  of  race  and  creed  and  party. 

At  first  the  plan  for  the  monument  proceeded  without 
any  obstacle.  The  Queen's  permission  was  obtained, 
though  it  was  given  with  some  reluctance  ;  the  few  voices 
which  were  raised  against  the  proposal  soon  relapsed  into 
silence  ;  a  slight  discussion  that  was  raised  in  the  House  of 
Commons  died  away.  It  was  not  till  the  spring  of  1880 
that  the  opposition  began  to  assume  a  serious  form.  An 
agitation  commenced  which  was,  to  a  considerable  extent, 
based  on  misconceptions  of  the  facts.    It  was,  for  instance, 


326 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1879-80 


persistently  stated,  in  spite  of  frequent  contradictions,  that 
the  site  on  which  was  to  be  erected  '  the  effigy  of  an  un- 
fledged princeling '  was  '  the  rifled  grave  of  Oliver  Crom- 
well.' The  statement  was  entirely  contrary  to  the  facts. 
Stanley,  who  had  himself  distinguished  the  'rifled  grave' 
of  the  Protector  with  a  memorial  slab,  and  who,  at  that 
very  moment,  was  endeavouring  to  raise  funds  for  a  fitting 
monument  to  occupy  the  spot  where  he  had  been  interred, 
was  the  last  person  thus  to  break  the  circle  of  historical 
combinations.  It  was  again  asserted,  with  every  variety 
of  perverse  misrepresentation,  that  he  had  received  the 
Queen's  commands  to  erect  the  monument,  and  that 
'Windsor  bade  him  prostitute  his  position  by  pandering 
to  Imperialist  sympathies.'  Here  again  the  assertion,  so 
glibly  and  confidently  made,  was  entirely  false  to  the  actual 
facts.  The  Queen  had,  it  is  true,  given  her  consent  to  the 
proposed  monument ;  but  she  had  done  so  reluctantly,  in 
spite  of  her  deep  sympathy  with  the  widowed,  childless, 
and  exiled  Empress  Eugenie,  from  respect  to  the  com- 
mittee by  which  the  proposal  was  supported,  and  in 
response  to  what  was  believed  to  be  the  genuine  and 
general  expression  of  national  concern  in  an  event  of 
exceptionally  tragic  interest.  It  was,  again,  alleged  that 
the  erection  of  the  monument  would  be  an  insult  to  the 
two  great  republics  of  France  and  the  United  States.  But, 
when  the  Prince  Imperial  died  in  a  strange  land,  France 
showed  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  her  public  organs  that 
pity  and  sympathy  overpowered  all  other  sentiments  enter- 
tained by  her  in  the  face  of  a  pathetic  calamity.  She  made 
no  remonstrance  against  the  proposed  statue ;  the  French 
Ambassador  expressed  in  the  strongest  terms  that  it  was 
a  matter  for  England,  and  not  for  France ;  and  Stanley's 
own  acquaintance  with  Frenchmen  of  all  classes  convinced 
him  that  the  tribute  it  was  proposed  to  pay  was  regarded 


CHAP,  xxiii    MONUMENT  TO  PRINCE  IMPERIAL  327 


as  natural  and  proper.  Nor  was  it  possible  that  the  United 
States,  which  had  honoured  the  names  of  Lafayette  and 
Pulaski,  the  Polish  exile,  and  which  would  certainly  have 
paid  similar  honours  to  the  two  Orleans  princes,  if  either  of 
them  had  chanced  to  fall  in  the  service  of  the  Union  during 
the  battles  of  1861  and  1862,  could  be  insulted  by  the 
erection  of  a  monument  to  the  Prince  Imperial,  who  had 
lost  his  life  in  the  service  of  the  English  Government. 

On  these  and  similar  grounds  Stanley  believed  that 
the  agitation  was  either  mistaken  or  fictitious.  He  had 
himself  no  political  or  personal  sympathy  with  the  Im- 
perialist cause.  If  the  Republican  Government  of  France 
failed  to  establish  itself,  he  looked  to  the  restoration  of  a 
constitutional  monarchy  under  the  Orleans  dynasty.  But, 
firmly  convinced  of  the  propriety  of  the  proposed  monu- 
ment, he  found  nothing  to  shake  his  conviction  in  the 
scantily-signed  petition  presented  to  him  by  Mr.  Fordham, 
or  in  the  arguments  addressed  to  him  by  a  deputation  of 
working-men,  or  in  the  scurrilous  and  threatening  letters 
by  which  he  was  continually  assailed.  He  adhered  to  his 
resolution  in  the  face  of  a  growing  agitation,  to  which  the 
elections  of  1880  gave  additional  strength.  But  he  had 
always  stated  his  readiness  to  yield  to  any  adverse  opinion, 
expressed  either  by  the  Queen  or  by  Parliament.  On 
July  i6th,  1880,  the  House  of  Commons  voted,  by  162  to 
147,  that  '  In  the  opinion  of  this  House,  the  erection  in 
Westminster  Abbey  of  a  statue  to  the  memory  of  the  late 
Prince  Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte  would  be  inconsistent 
with  the  national  character  of  that  edifice.'  In  the  face  of 
this  hostile  vote  he  was  at  once  prepared  to  withdraw  his 
consent  to  the  erection  of  the  proposed  monument. 

At  this  stage,  however,  the  matter  was  taken  out  of  his 
hands  by  the  Napoleon  Memorial  Committee,  which  had 
hitherto,  somewhat  to  his  surprise,  allowed  him  to  bear  the 


328 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1879-80 


whole  brunt  of  the  agitation  against  their  proposal.  The 
following  correspondence,  which  appeared  in  the  public 
press,  closed  the  history  of  the  incident : 

'  Cleveland  Square,  S.W. :  July  21st,  1880. 

'  Dear  Mr.  Dean,  —  At  a  meeting  of  the  Napoleon  Me- 
morial Committee  held  this  day  I  was  requested  to  in- 
form you  that  the  Committee  have  unanimously  resolved  to 
withdraw  the  proposal  to  place  the  monument  of  the  late 
Prince  Imperial  in  Henry  VI I. 's  Chapel. 

'  I  beg  to  remain,  dear  Mr.  Dean 

'  Yours  very  faithfully, 

'  Sydney. 

■  The  Very  Rev.  the  Dean  of  Westminster.' 

'  Deanery,  Westminster:  July  21st,  1880. 

'  My  dear  Lord,  —  I  have  received  your  Lordship's  com- 
munication of  the  resolution  of  the  Committee  to  withdraw 
the  proposal  for  erecting  a  monument  to  the  late  Prince 
Imperial  in  King  Henry  VII. 's  Chapel.  I  accede  to  the 
withdrawal.  You  will,  perhaps,  permit  me  to  add  a  few 
words  on  the  subject. 

'  There  are  few  acts  of  my  official  life  at  Westminster 
on  which  I  look  back  with  more  satisfaction  than  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  offer  of  the  monument  to  the  Prince  Im- 
perial. 

'  It  was  the  response  to  a  feeling  of  universal  sympathy 
which  at  the  time  I  believed  to  be  permanent,  and  which 
I  still  believe  to  have  been  genuine. 

'  It  was  in  entire  conformity  with  the  best  traditions  of 
the  Abbey,  in  the  commemoration  of  an  event  most  tragical, 
and,  considering  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  most 
historical.  It  expressed  the  sense  of  national  reparation 
due  for  a  signal  misfortune. 

'  "  Sjint  lachiytHce  reritm,  et  mentcin  viortalia  tajignnt." 

'  I  have  since  repeatedly  refused  to  withdraw  my  con- 
sent to  a  proposal  to  which  I  considered  myself  in  honour 
pledged.  In  the  early  part  of  this  year  I  made  the  follow- 
ing public  statement  : 

'  "The  authority  of  the  Sovereign,  or  the  Parliament,  or 
of  the  Ministers  for  the  time  being,  would  have  absolved  me 
from  any  responsibility  in  the  matter.  But  such  authority 
has  not  intervened,  and  so  long  as  I  am  left  to  act  on  my 


CHAP.  XXIII    MONUMENT  TO  PRINCE  IMPERIAL 


329 


own  responsibility,  I  cannot  recede  from  what  I  deliber- 
ately believe  to  be  my  public  duty." 

'The  Sovereign,  who  is  the  Visitor  of  the  whole  institu- 
tion, and  to  whom  it  appertains  to  command  or  forbid 
the  interment  or  the  commemoration  of  anyone  in  King 
Henry  VII. 's  Chapel,  has  since  the  acceptance  of  the  offer 
never  swerved  from  the  determination  to  keep  the  engage- 
ment then  entered  upon.  The  Ministers  have  supported 
this  determination  equally  in  the  late  and  the  present  Par- 
liament. But  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Commons  has 
defeated  the  decision  of  the  Ministers  by  a  resolution  which 
has  the  effect  of  throwing  upon  the  House  the  responsibility 
of  a  refusal.  The  resolution,  to  have  its  full  effect,  should 
have  assumed  the  usual  form  which  alone  could  give  it 
legal  validity  —  that  of  an  Address  to  the  Crown  as  Visitor 
of  the  Abbey.  But  your  Committee  have  rightly  judged 
(i.e.  if  I  may  presume  to  give  an  opinion)  that  a  proposed 
honour  met  in  a  temper  so  unlike  to  that  in  which  it  was 
offered  would  lose  its  gracious  intention. 

'I  have  always  recognised  a  legitimate  difference  of 
opinion  on  the  subject.  There  are  very  few  interments  or 
commemorations  in  the  Abbey  which  have  not  provoked 
some  such  difference.  But  I  was  not  prepared  to  find  that 
an  overflow  of  generous  sympathy  was  to  be  checked 
from  political  considerations,  or  that  circumstances  en- 
tirely accidental  or  irrelevant  should  have  been  magnified 
into  importance,  or  that  the  liberal  and  comprehensive 
principles  which,  without  respect  to  persons,  or  party,  or 
nationality,  have  hitherto  marked  the  administration  of 
Westminster  Abbey,  should  have  been  discouraged  or 
thwarted. 

'  Such  an  expression  of  opinion  it  may  for  many  reasons 
be  inexpedient  to  disregard.  It  conveys,  no  doubt,  the 
views  of  a  large  amount  of  public  feeling.  I  venture  to 
utter  on  the  part  of  many  their  grateful  sense  of  the  public 
spirit  of  those  who,  at  some  risk  to  themselves,  have  stood 
firm  against  what  they  conceived  to  be  an  illiberal  and 
ignorant  clamour.  I  have,  further,  to  acknowledge  the 
kindly  expressions  used  on  the  occasion  towards  myself,  as 
also  (if  I  may  venture  to  do  so)  towards  the  gallant  and 
unfortunate  Prince  and  his  widowed  mother.  They  are  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  persistent  misrepresentations  and 
savage  menaces  which  have  hitherto  supported  the  agita- 
tion on  this  subject. 


330 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1880 


'The  monument,  which  is  nearly  completed,  will  receive 
a  habitation  worthy  of  the  labour  and  skill  which  the  gifted 
sculptor  has  bestowed  upon  it,  and  of  the  pathetic  feelings 
which  it  embodies. 

'The  vacant  chapel  in  Westminster  Abbey  which  should 
have  contained  it  will  always  cherish  the  association,  which 
will  give  it  enduring  interest. 

'On  the  adjoining  pavement  I  long  ago  caused  to  be 
recorded  the  only  act  in  which  a  precedent  for  the  recent 
action  of  the  House  of  Commons  is  sought  to  be  found  — 
the  disinterment  of  the  magnates  of  the  Commonwealth 
under  the  pressure  of  the  strong  outburst  of  party  passion 
which  followed  the  Restoration.  Posterity  will  judge  how 
far  the  ungenerous  spirit  which  governed  the  Parliament 
of  1661  still,  under  an  altered  form,  survives  in  the  Parlia- 
ment of  1 880. 

'  I  have  the  honour  to  be 

'  Yours  faithfully, 
*A.  P.  Stanley.' 

That  so  picturesque  and  tragical  an  event  as  the  death 
of  the  last  of  the  Bonapartes  should  not  be  commemorated 
in  Westminster  Abbey  was  undoubtedly  a  disappointment 
to  Stanley.  But  in  the  agitation  and  its  result  he  found 
a  characteristic  consolation.  'At  least,'  he  said,  'they 
show  how  deeply  the  English  people  love  their  Abbey.' 


CHAP.  XXIV 


FIRST  YEAR  AS  DEAN 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
1864-70 

DOMESTIC  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE  — REGRETS  FOR  OXFORD— LET- 
TERS TO  HIS  WIFE  — FOREIGN  TOUR  IN  1864— 'THE  WATERS 
TRAGEDY'  — INTERVIEW  WITH  NEWMAN  — LOVE  FOR  WEST- 
MINSTER ABBEY  —  DOMESTIC  HAPPINESS  —  HIS  DAILY  LIFE 
AT  WESTMINSTER  —  FOREIGN  TOUR  IN  1865— VISIT  TO 
BISHOP  THIRLWALL  — FUNERAL  OF  LORD  PALMERSTON  — 
VALLOMBROSA  IN  1866  — INTERVIEW  WITH  POPE  PIUS  IX.— 
DUPANLOUP— DISCOVERY  OF  ORIGINAL  MS.  OF  PRAYER 
BOOK  OF  1662  — FOREIGN  TOUR  IN  1867— THIERS— DEATH 
OF  DEAN  MILMAN,  1868— FOREIGN  TOUR  IN  1868— THE 
PRUSSIAN  ROYAL  FAMILY  — THE  VATICAN  COUNCIL,  1869  — 
PERE  HYACINTHE  AND  DR.  DOLLINGER  — CONSECRATION  OF 
DR.  TEMPLE,  DECEMBER  21ST,  1869  —  CORRESPONDENCE 
WITH  THE  REV.  C.  VOYSEY. 

Not  less  interesting,  and  scarcely  less  important,  than 
Stanley's  official  guardianship  of  Westminster  Abbey,  his 
literary  labours,  or  his  championship  of  lost  causes  and 
vilified  names,  is  his  domestic  and  social  life. 

During  the  first  few  months  which  followed  his  removal 
to  Westminster  regrets  for  Oxford  frequently  rose  to  the 
surface  in  his  letters.  Weeks  passed  before  he  could  shake 
off  the  feeling  expressed  in  the  following  extract  from  a 
letter  written  to  Professor  Max  Miiller  on  January  8th, 
1864,  the  evening  before  his  installation  as  Dean  of  West- 
minster : 

'This  morning  I  left  Oxford  —  left  the  dear  home  of 
seven  years,  never  to  revisit  it  as  my  own  ;  for  to-morrow 
I  cease  to  be  Canon,  Professor,  Councillor.  I  try  to  repeat 
to  myself  that  with  like  regrets  I  left  Canterbury,  and  with 
like  misgivings  I  came  to  Oxford.    But  this  I  know :  there 


332 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


are  some  opportunities,  and  some  vast  sources  of  happi- 
ness, which  can  no  more  return  ;  and  there  are  difficulties 
in  store  for  me  such  as  I  have  never  encountered  before. 
Remember  me,  dear  friend,  for  my  dear  mother's  sake,  and 
take  courage,  from  my  present  sense  of  the  value  of  what 
I  am  leaving,  not  to  despair  of  Oxford.' 

The  arrival  of  Dr.  Liddell's  belated  letter  in  January 
1864^  revived  in  all  its  freshness  the  pain  of  his  decision 
to  accept  the  Deanery.  Writing  from  Edinburgh,  where 
he  had  just  delivered,  'with  tolerable  success,'  two  lectures 
on  Solomon,^  he  sends  the  letter  to  his  sister  Mary. 

'  Considering  that  it  is  the  only  postal  miscarriage  that 
we  have  ever  had,  and  its  immense  importance  (for  it 
might  have  prevented  the  acceptance,  or,  at  least,  the 
offer),  I  think  that  it  is  one  of  the  most  singular  links  in 
my  destiny  that  has  yet  appeared.' 

There  were  later  moments,  also,  when  all  his  depression 
returned.  One  such  occasion  arose  from  the  visit  which  he 
paid  to  Oxford  in  March  1864,  in  order  to  vote  for  the 
proposed  increase  to  the  endowment  of  the  Greek  Profes- 
sorship. The  proposal  was  rejected  by  Convocation. 
Alarmed  at  the  acquittal  by  the  Privy  Council  of  Dr. 
Williams  and  Mr.  Wilson,  and  anxious  to  express  their 
disapprobation  of  'Essays  and  Reviews,'  the  majority  of 
the  members  decided  to  accept  the  labours,  but  withhold 
the  salary,  of  Professor  Jowett.  '  I  felt  yesterday,'  writes 
Stanley  to  Hugh  Pearson  on  his  return  to  Westminster, 

'  more  than  ever  the  irreparable  loss  to  me  of  my  position 
there,  and  the  insuperable  difficulties  of  my  position  here. 

'  The  event  of  yesterday  was  a  proof  of  the  wretched 
corruption  of  the  clergy.  Such  levity  !  Such  folly  !  How 
can  one  bear  up  against  it,  and  make  anything  of  so  strange 
a  profession } ' 

^  See  Vol.  ii.  p.  136. 

2  These  two  lectures  were  substantially  the  same  as  Lectures  xxvi.,  xxvii., 
xxviii.  in  Vol.  ii.  of  the  Lectures  on  the  History  oj  the  jfewisk  Church. 


CHAP.  XXIV 


FIRST  YEAR  AS  DEAN 


333 


'I  often  sigh  for  Oxford,'  he  writes  in  April  1864  to 
Professor  Max  Miiller,  'and  fear  lest  my  time  here  will  be 
broken  to  pieces  against  insuperable  obstacles,  and  in  use- 
less, trivial  labour.'  So  again,  in  July  of  the  same  year,  he 
complains  to  the  Professor  of  '  the  haste  in  which  alone  this 
terrible  whirl  allows  me  to  write  anything.' 

Gradually,  however,  he  became  reconciled  to  '  the  new 
life,'  which  he  describes  himself,  in  June  1864,  as  'learning 
amid  countless  small  calls  and  pre-occupation  of  business.' 
The  objections  offered  to  his  appointment,  which  threat- 
ened to  bring  him  into  unpleasant  relations  with  at  least 
one  of  his  colleagues,  wholly  died  away ;  he  was  on  good 
terms  with  every  member  of  the  Chapter,  and  Dr.  Words- 
worth became  his  warm  personal  friend.  This  peaceful 
entrance  upon  his  office  Stanley  owed  partly  to  his  own 
resolve  of  keeping  silent  under  all  attacks,  partly  to  the 
conciliatory  tact  of  his  v/ife,  who  spared  no  pains  to  smooth 
his  path.  '  Is  it  possible,'  asked  one  of  the  canons,  who 
was  struck  by  the  cordial  warmth  of  her  manner,  '  that  all 
this  can  be  sincere  .'' '  '  Yes,'  was  the  reply  of  the  Duchess 
of  Buccleuch  ;  '  it  is  the  echo  of  her  heart.'  Every  day 
Stanley  learned  to  lean  more  and  more  upon  his  wife,  who 
was  to  be  his  'inseparable  partner  in  every  joy  and 
struggle,'  and  whose  'sustaining  love,'  'inspiring  courage,' 
and  'never-failing  faith  in  the  enlargement  of  the  Church 
and  the  triumph  of  all  truth,'  3  supported  him  for  the  next 
twelve  eventful  years  of  his  life.  For  the  moment,  indeed, 
and  at  intervals  throughout  this  and  the  following  year, 
Lady  Augusta  had  resumed  her  place  at  Court.  In  writ- 
ing to  her,  Stanley  comments  on  the  fact  that  few  persons 
after  marriage  are  ever  transported  so  exactly  back  into  a 
former  position.    He  feels,  he  says,  that  'you  now  know  all 

'  Dedication  of  Vol.  iii.  of  tlie  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jetuish 
Church. 


334 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864 


the  drawbacks  of  the  new  Ufa  you  have  chosen,  all  the 
shortcomings  of  the  fretful,  anxious,  moody  being  that  you 
have  taken  to  yourself  for  better  or  worse '  ;  but  he  adds 
the  confident  hope  that  'your  thoughts  turn  back  to  this 
dear  library,  and  that  you  are  here  in  heart  and  spirit.' 

In  his  letters  to  his  wife  he  collects  every  detail  of  his 
social  life  —  his  two  meetings  with  Garibaldi,  the  parties  to 
which  he  is  going,  his  speech  at  the  Fishmongers'  Dinner, 
and  all  the  miscellaneous  sights  that  he  has  seen,  or  the 
news  that  he  has  heard.  He  speaks  of  his  pleasure  in 
meeting  at  dinner  all  the  Nonconformist  leaders.  '  It  struck 
me,'  he  adds,  '  that  they  were  very  nearly  as  much  removed 
from  knowledge  of  us  as  we  from  knowledge  of  them.' 
He  had  called  on  Bishop  Colenso,  thinking  'that,  unless  I 
took  some  means  of  showing  him  sympathy  and  kindness, 
we  shall  all  have  cause  to  repent  it  afterwards.'  He  writes 
to  her  of  current  events  in  the  ecclesiastical  world.  'I  have 
not,'  he  says  in  March  1864,  immediately  after  the  decision 
of  the  Privy  Council  in  the  case  of  '  Essays  and  Reviews,' 

'the  very  least  fear  about  the  Church  of  England  now. 
There  will  be  a  succession  of  explosions  between  this  and 
August.  But  they  will  pass  away,  and  the  Judgment  of 
the  Privy  Council,  with  its  healing  effect,  will  remain  ;  the 
gradual  tide  of  progress  will  move  us  on  ;  and  if  we  can 
but  be  true  to  ourselves,  all  will  be  right.' 

He  tells  her  of  his  visits  to  the  dying  Duke  of  New- 
castle, with  whom  he  read  and  prayed,  and  to  whom  he 
administered  the  Sacrament.  He  consults  her  about  his 
sermons,  '  into  which  I  cannot  throw  myself  unless  I  know 
that  they  have  your  approval  beforehand.'  He  describes 
the  physical  difficulties  which  he  encountered  in  taking  the 
part  in  the  Special  Services  that  he  reserved  for  himself. 
'  I  read,'  he  says  in  one  of  his  letters, 

'the  Lessons  in  the  Abbey,  which  I  much  enjoyed.  That 
fine  chapter  of  Deuteronomy  was  almost  as  good  as  a  ser- 


CHAP.  XXIV      LETTER  TO  LADY  A.  STANLEY 


335 


mon.  I  only  wish  that  the  eagle  would  have  stooped  his 
neck  a  little,  so  as  not  exactly  to  have  thrust  up  his  head 
between  me  and  the  congregation.' 

Those  who  remember  Stanley's  reading  of  the  Lessons 
will  welcome  the  image,  which  the  paragragh  recalls,  of  the 
small  figure  hidden  behind  the  lectern.  No  one  who  heard 
him  could  doubt  his  love  for  the  book  from  which  he  read 
— a  love  that  was  no  less  deep  and  reverential  because  it  was 
full  of  dramatic  intelligence.  Thrilled  himself,  he  thrilled 
his  hearers.  His  voice  lost,  as  it  were,  its  consciousness  of 
time  and  place,  and  gathered  depth  and  resonance  as  he 
entered  with  passionate  sympathy  into  the  wailing  anguish 
of  David's  lament  for  his  'son  Absalom,'  or  chaunted  with 
'  ringing  exaltation '  the  triumphant  Song  of  Deborah. 

For  his  wife's  amusement,  also,  he  gathers  every  ridicu- 
lous incident  which  his  keen  sense  of  humour  detected. 
No  detail,  for  instance,  is  spared  which  can  heighten  the 
ludicrous  effect  of  the  famous  Fray  of  the  Frying-Pan, 
which  in  March  1864  convulsed  Westminster  School  and 
its  authorities.  By  ancient  custom  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
College  cook  on  Shrove  Tuesday  to  throw  a  pancake  over 
a  bar  in  the  great  schoolroom  at  Westminster. 

'  As  the  pancake  falls  to  the  other  side,  the  boys  scramble 
for  it,  and  he  who  gets  it  comes  to  the  Dean  for  a  guinea. 
On  this  occasion  the  cook  failed  in  throwing  the  cake. 
Thereupon  an  ancient  war-cry,  not  heard  for  twenty  years, 
arose  —  "Book  him!"  —  and  a  shower  of  books  was  dis- 
charged by  the  boys  at  his  head.  He,  goaded  to  frenzy, 
flung  the  fryingpan  among  the  boys  —  a  formidable  weapon, 
which  might  have  killed  the  luckless  wight  it  struck.  This 
wight  was  George  Dasent.  It  happily  avoided  any  vital 
part,  but  cut  open  his  head  —  an  unfortunate  head,  for  it 
had  already  been  cut  open  by  a  stone  flung  in  the  streets. 
Now  upon  the  scene  appeared  the  boy  himself,  with  his 
bleeding  head,  and  the  fryingpan  in  his  hand,  which  he 
begged  for  a  trophy,  and  which  I  granted. 

'Before  dinner  I  saw  the  cook,  who  said  in  the  most 


336 


LIFE  OF  DEAAT  STANLEY 


doleful  manner  that  he  felt  sure  beforehand  that  he  should 
fail  in  throwing  the  pancake.  "  I  met  Sanders  in  the 
cloister,  and  said,  '  I  know  it  will  be  no  go.'  "  He  particu- 
larly lamented  that  it  should  have  struck  young  Dasent, 
who  was  the  most  innocent  of  the  whole  set.  "But  then, 
sir,  there  are  occasions  when  the  innocent  must  suffer  for 
the  guilty."  I  told  him  that  I  had  given  Dasent  the 
fryingpan.    "  Oh  !  but  it  was  a  new  one  !  "  ' 

Accepting  the  change  from  Oxford  to  London,  increas- 
ingly happy  in  his  home-surroundings  and  his  official  posi- 
tion, looking  forward  with  growing  hopefulness  towards  the 
ecclesiastical  future,  he  recovered  all  the  energies  which  his 
mother's  death  had  temporarily  and  partially  paralysed. 
His  life  resumed  its  former  course,  though  it  flowed  between 
wider  banks  and  in  a  fuller  stream.  The  old  interests  were 
pursued  with  all  his  former  vigour,  the  old  relaxations 
enjoyed  with  unabated  zest. 

In  August  1864  he  started  with  his  wife  for  a  foreign 
tour.  The  expedition  differed  in  two  respects  from  any 
which  he  had  previously  undertaken.  It  consisted  mainly 
of  visits  made  to  French  country-houses,  and  he  enjoyed 
in  Lady  Augusta  the  companionship  of  a  finished  linguist. 
'You  may  think,'  he  writes  to  his  sister,  'of  the  extraor- 
dinary comfort  —  in  addition  to  all  other  pleasures  — 
of  having  someone  who  is  as  absolutely  at  home  in  French 
as  in  English.'  The  tour  began  with  a  visit  to  Madame 
Lebrun  at  Provins,  the  ancient  residence  of  the  Counts 
of  Champagne.  A  letter  written  from  that  quaint  decayed 
city  shows  the  ascendency  of  the  historical  interest  which 
Westminster  was  already  assuming  over  his  mind.  The 
Counts  of  Champagne  were  zealous  Crusaders.  One  of 
them  —  Thibaut  the  Troubadour  —  brought  back  from  the 
Fourth  Crusade 

'a  bright  crimson  rose,  the  rose  of  Sharon  —  the  rose 
stained  with  the  blood  of  Venus's  foot,  as  she  ran  after 


CHAP.  XXIV 


PROVINS 


337 


Adonis  through  the  thickets.  And  this  rose  became  the  Rose 
of  Provins,  which  we  incorrectly  call  a  Provence  rose.  The 
gardens  of  Provins  were  once  full  of  it ;  the  "  Conserves 
de  Roses  de  Provins"  were  sold  throughout  France;  and 
the  wreaths  in  Church  festivals  were  made  of  it.  It 
flowers  in  June,  and  consequently,  when  we  were  there, 
only  one  or  two  remained  ;  I  enclose  a  leaf. 

'  The  widow  of  Thibaut's  son  married  Edmund  of  Lan- 
caster, the  Crouchback,  who  lies  buried  in  a  stately  tomb 
beside  his  father's  grave  in  Westminster  Abbey.  This 
crouchbacked  Edmund  had  a  singular  mission  at  Provins. 
Thibaut  the  Troubadour  had,  in  accordance  with  the  rising 
power  of  the  middle-classes,  created  a  mayor  of  Provins, 
and  one  of  the  first  of  them  was  Guillaume  Pentecote, 
whose  father  had  been  in  the  Fourth  Crusade.  This  Cru- 
sading mayor  was  opposed  to  an  early-closing  movement, 
and  had  the  great  curfew  bell  of  the  town  rung  an  hour 
later;  in  consequence  of  which  he  was  attacked  by  a  mob, 
headed  by  the  Lord  Shaftesbury  of  that  time,  and  killed 
in  his  Mansion  House,  a  tower  at  the  corner  of  Madame 
Lebrun's  garden.  For  this  crime  Edmund  came  to  visit 
Provins,  and  made  such  havoc  of  the  inhabitants  that  the 
place  has  never  recovered  since.  And  what  with  his  mal- 
treatment of  it,  and  the  carrying  off  of  their  drapers  and 
clothiers  to  England  by  the  English,  who  afterwards  occu- 
pied it,  it  has  shrunk  into  smaller  dimensions  than  any 
town  of  like  importance  on  this  side  of  the  Alps.  Fields 
and  farms  extend  where  once  were  streets,  and  a  hedgerow 
grows  where  once  was  the  Rue  des  Orfevres.  There  was 
a  new  bell  made,  called  Guillonette,  in  honour  of  William, 
which  still  rings  the  curfew  : 

Je  suis  Guillonette, 

Et  j'^tais  faite 

Pour  sonner  la  retraite. 

Out  of  all  this  havoc  two  relics  were  carried  to  England. 
One  was  the  yard  measure  which,  for  many  years,  was  in 
France  peculiar  to  Provins  ;  the  other  was  the  crimson 
rose,  which  Edmund  of  Lancaster  carried  home,  and  which 
through  him  became  the  Rose  of  Lancaster. 

'  I  have  been  obliged  to  compress  my  story  a  good  deal, 
but  I  assure  you  that  it  is  quite  a  picture  of  the  time, 
when  one  puts  it  all  together :  the  Crusades,  the  mayor, 
VOL.  II  Z 


338 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


the  Troubadour  Count,  the  English  conqueror's  vengeance  ; 
and  I  shall  now  always  look  on  the  tomb  of  Crouchback 
with  double  the  interest  that  I  had  in  him  before.' 

In  the  midst  of  his  tour  his  plans  were  interrupted  and 
his  pleasure  completely  destroyed  by  the  news  that  two  of 
the  children  of  his  servant,  Waters,  were  lying  dangerously 
ill  from  scarlet-fever.  '  We  can  think  and  talk  of  nothing 
else,'  he  writes.  While  staying  at  Val  Richer  with  M. 
Guizot,  he  heard  that  the  youngest  of  the  children,  '  dear 
little  Nellie,'  as  he  calls  her,  was  dead,  and  that  neither  her 
sister  nor  her  father  was  expected  to  recover.  He  hurried 
home  at  once,  but  only  arrived  to  find  that  the  death  of 
Ellen  Waters  on  September  15th  had  been  followed  by 
that  of  her  sister  Emmeline  on  September  17th,  and  that 
of  Waters  himself  on  the  21st  of  the  same  month. 

The  blow  was  a  very  heavy  one  to  a  man  of  Stanley's 
affectionate  nature.  '  I  am  one  of  those,'  writes  the  Queen, 
in  expressing  her  sympathy  with  him  and  with  the  widow, 
'who  think  the  loss  of  a  faithful  servant  the  loss  of  a 
friend,  and  one  who  can  never  be  replaced.'  Such,  also, 
was  Stanley's  feeling.  Always  the  kindest  and  most  con- 
siderate of  masters,  he  was  warmly  attached  to  his  servant 
and  his  children.  His  grief  at  the  '  Waters  Tragedy ' 
was  scarcely  less  than  that  which  the  death  of  his  nurse, 
Sarah  Burgess,  had  caused  him.  Benjamin  Waters  was 
far  more  to  him  than  a  servant.  He  had  been  his  com- 
panion on  his  second  tour  in  the  East;  he  had  proved  him- 
self, as  his  master  said,  a  '  faithful  and  familiar  friend '  ; 
and  his  little  girls  were  the  pets  of  the  bachelor  home  of 
the  Canon  of  Christ  Church.  Not  the  least  of  the  many 
difficulties  which,  at  the  last  moment,  made  it  painful  for 
Stanley  to  leave  Oxford  had  been  the  reluctance  of  Waters 
to  accompany  him  to  Westminster.  Won  over  by  the 
kindness  of  Lady  Augusta,  Waters  had  in  the  end  fol- 


CHAP.  XXIV  '  THE  WATERS  TRAGEDY' 


339 


lowed  his  master  to  the  Deanery,  and  there  he  was  estab- 
lished with  his  wife  and  family.  The  father  and  his  two 
daughters  were  buried  in  Holywell  Cemetery,  at  Oxford, 
where  Stanley  read  the  Burial  Service  over  his  friend,  and 
chose  the  inscription  that  was  placed  upon  the  tomb  — 
'  Behold,  I  and  the  children  whom  God  hath  given  me.' 
Mrs.  Waters  and  her  two  surviving  children  found  a  home 
at  the  Deanery  until  1881. 

'What  the  loss  is  to  me,' writes  Stanley  to  his  aunt, 
Mrs.  Augustus  Hare,  on  September  24th,  1864, 

'  what  the  grief,  you  and  Augustus  can  well  understand. 
I  loved  him  like  a  brother,  and  he  was  doubly  endeared  to 
me  by  his  companionship  through  all  those  trying  days  in 
1862. 

'  I  long  for  you  to  see  my  dearest  Augusta.  Her  sym- 
pathy in  this  affliction  is  most  consoling.  What  a  valley 
of  the  shadow  of  death  has  her  life  been  for  the  last  five 
years  !  But  I  know  no  one  who  has  a  firmer  hold  on  "  the 
staff  "  to  support.' 

In  the  same  strain  he  writes  to  his  friend  Henry  de 
Bunsen  on  September  27th  : 

'  I  have  to  thank  you  for  your  sympathy.  You  have 
seen  and  felt  exactly  what  this  blow  has  been  to  me  —  a 
blow  so  far  more  severe  than  is  the  loss  even  of  a  faithful 
servant,  severe  as  such  a  blow  always  is.  It  is  the  shat- 
tering asunder  of  a  whole  cluster  of  living  recollections, 
and  associations,  and  graces,  such  as  I  can  never  replace. 
What  is  the  purpose  of  such  a  destruction  }  Shall  we  ever 
know?  Shall  we  ever,  in  this  life,  even  guess  at  it.''  I 
laid  my  dear  Waters  in  his  grave  yesterday  in  the  Holy- 
well Cemetery,  at  Oxford,  with  his  beloved  children. 
Vale,  diilcissime  !  I  may  indeed  say,  Vivat  —  vivant — in 
Deo  ! ' 

Stanley  had  neither  the  heart  nor  the  time  to  resume 
his  foreign  tour.  He  therefore  spent  the  rest  of  his 
holiday  in  England.    At  the  end  of  October  1864  he  was 


340 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864 


preaching  in  one  of  the  churches  at  Birmingham.  The 
next  clay  he  called  on  Dr.  Newman  at  the  Oratory.  The 
following  account  of  the  interview  is  written  to  J.  C. 
Shairp  on  October  30th,  1864: 

'  The  Oratory  is  a  collegiate  building  by  the  roadside, 
more  barred  and  grated  than  Balliol  or  St.  Salvador,  but 
otherwise  nothing  peculiarly  monastic.  I  sent  up  my 
card,  and  waited  in  a  small  parlour.  There  were  two  or 
three  religious  engravings  —  some  of  Overbeck's  little 
prints  —  over  the  fire,  and  in  one  corner  a  commonplace 
bird's-eye  view  of  Oxford  (of  this  I  had  heard  before  from 
someone),  with  the  text  in  Latin  from  Ezekiel  over  the 
upper  frame  —  "  So7i  of  Man,  can  these  dry  bones  live  ?  "  — 
and  on  the  lower  frame  —  "  O  Lord  God,  Thou  ktiowest." 

'  Presently  the  "  Filitis  hominis  "  appeared.  The  feat- 
ures are  quite  unaltered,  and  the  voice,  and,  as  far  as  I  re- 
member, the  manner.  The  same  appearance  of  simplicity 
and  tenderness,  and  yet,  withal,  something  of  weakness, 
as  if  he  could  offer  no  resistance  to  you.  "  It  is  very  kind 
of  you  to  come  out  so  far"  were  his  first  words.  At  first 
we  talked  of  Oxford  —  of  the  times  when  I  had  seen  him  ; 
then  of  Pusey  —  his  industry.    "It  is  more  than  energy 

—  it  is  a  power."  "He  always  despised  those  who  read 
newspapers."  He  had  not  seen  him  since  1846,  when,  as 
I  remember  being  told,  he  had  been  to  see  him  ;  "  he 
begged  me  to  come  to  him  "  when  E.  B.  P.  was  supposed 
to  be  mortally  ill. 

'  He  then  spoke  of  the  Roman  Catholics  having  bought 
a  piece  of  ground  in  Oxford  for  a  new  "church,"  "to 
which  I  may  possibly  be  obliged  to  go  from  time  to  time  " 

—  evidently  with  a  profound  inner  repugnance.  He  very 
much  deprecated  the  notion  of  any  proselytism  ;  as  far  as 
he  was  concerned,  he  would  never  encourage  anything  of 
the  kind  —  "  No  — o,  never."  It  was  to  be  for  the  sake  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  students  —  something  more  accepta- 
ble than  the  small  chapel  at  St.  Clement's.  I  spoke  of  my 
travels  in  France,  and  mentioned  Albert  de  Broglie.  "  I 
have  heard  of  his  book,  but  never  read  it."*  (I  think  that 
of  all  the  things  that  he  said,  this  the  most  surprised  me.) 
I  spoke  of  its  interest.    "Oh,  yes;   of  all  subjects,  it  is 


*  L'Eglise  et  U Empire  Romain  au  IVme  Siecle, 


CHAP.  XXIV        INTERVIEW  WITH  NEWMAN 


that  which  has  most  attraction  forme  —  not  the  Roman 
Republic,  but  the  Roman  Empire." 

'  I  then  gradually  led  to  Ewald  ;  and  he  regretted  his 
ignorance  of  German.  "  But  their  style  is  so  uncongenial 
—  they  despise  style;  my  brother"  (i.e.  F.  N.),  "who  was 
here  the  other  day,  tells  me  that  even  he  can  only  make 
out  their  meaning  by  spanning  the  parentheses  with  his 
fingers  or  with  a  pair  of  compasses."  I  spoke  of  the  great 
merits  of  Ewald  ;  and  he  urged  once,  twice,  and  thrice  the 
great  service  which  he  or  anyone  would  render  who  would 
draw  a  distinction  between  the  dissolving  criticism  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  the  Gospels.  His  constant  recurrence 
to  this,  and  the  very  great  difficulty  of  bringing  him  to 
acknowledge  that  the  Gospels  must  stand  or  fall  by  their 
own  merits,  appeared  to  me  the  weakest  part — the  least 
truth-like  part — of  his  conversation.  I  endeavoured  to 
point  out  the  difference  between  the  shadowy  character  of 
Genesis  and  the  historical  character  of  David's  life.  He 
played,  playfully  and  apologetically,  "  the  Devil's  advocate  " 
against  the  books  of  Samuel  —  said  that  they  appeared  to 
him  more  like  a  poem  than  any  other  part  of  the  Bible ; 
and  enlarged,  with  the  only  directly  poetic  fervour  which 
he  showed,  on  the  dramatic  character  of  Saul's  fall,  the 
rise  of  David,  the  gradual  growth  of  Samuel.  I  urged  the 
evidently  composite  character  of  Genesis.  This  he  at  once 
acknowledged.  "  It  struck  me  the  moment  I  first  read 
those  chapters  in  Hebrew.  There  must  be  two  docu- 
ments. And  I  mentioned  it  to  Pusey,  who  seemed  to 
acknowledge  it.  Would  he  acknowledge  it  now  "  A.  P.  S. : 
"I  think  not."  "But  then,  I  seem  to  myself"  (and  here 
the  fear  seemed  to  revive)  "  to  see  this  same  compilatory 
character  in  the  Gospels  :  not  a  regular  history,  but  bio- 
graphical anecdotes  strung  together." 

'I  put  to  him  the  question  how  far  any  speculations  on 
these  characteristics  of  the  sacred  books,  or  on  inspiration, 
were  barred  by  the  Council  of  Trent.  "  Not  in  the  least  "  ; 
and  he  entered  on  an  elaborate  argument,  with  which  I 
need  not  trouble  you,  but  it  appeared  to  me  quite  con- 
vincing—  to  confirm  ex abundanti  my  view  that  the  Decrees 
of  Trent  are  on  these  points  as  open  as  the  English  formu- 
laries interpreted  by  the  Privy  Council.  "  But  then,  there  is 
a  continuous  tradition,  which  no  doubt  has  been  growing 
fainter  and  fainter,  as  to  the  peculiar  sacredness  of  those 


342 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


books,  and  this  tradition  is  incorporated  in  what  they  call 
the  School."  (Here  again  I  will  not  go  into  the  argu- 
ments and  facts  adduced.)  He  recurred  once  more  to  the 
question  of  the  lines  of  entrenchment  round  the  Gospels, 
and  asked  whether  a  Protestant  theologian,  who  were  to 
establish  such  a  distinction  between  the  Old  Testament  and 
the  New  Testament,  would  not  be  hailed  as  a  benefactor 
in  the  English  Church.  A.  P.  S.  :  "  No  !  he  would  be  cursed 
far  more,  as  having  disparaged  the  O.  T.,  than  blessed  for 
having  saved  the  N.  T."  He  urged  that  these  questions 
were  so  much  more  vital  to  us  than  to  them,  because  we 
had  nothing  to  repose  on  besides  the  Bible.  They  had  their 
Church  authority,  &c.  I  granted  this,  but  said,  "There  is 
the  very  reason  why  (if  I  may  so  speak)  you  and  your  Church 
are  far  more  bound  to  meet  those  questions  face  to  face 
and  fearlessly  than  we  are.  You,  if  any,  are  called  to  the 
task,  and  you  do  not  help  us."  "  I  grant  it,"  he  said.  "  We 
can  do  nothing;  our  'School'  is  scattered.  We  have 
no  theologians  left ;  the  French  Revolution  spoiled  us  of 
our  revenues  ;  we  are  powerless."  "At  any  rate,"  I  said, 
"  give  us  breathing-space  ;  do  not  help  to  shut  down  the 
trap-door  upon  us,  as  is  the  wish  of  so  many  of  our  excel- 
lent friends  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  prevent  the  dis- 
cussion of  all  those  questions  which  have  rushed  in  upon 
us." 

'  This  was  nearly  the  last  thing  that  passed.  He 
offered  to  show  me  his  library.  I  went  up  ;  it  was  the 
complete  collection  of  all  his  Oxford  and  Littlemore  books 
—  books  given  him  by  his  pupils,  &c.  —  evidently  a  great 
pride  and  pleasure  to  him.  We  passed  out  through  the 
corridors,  passed  through  the  dimly-lighted  church  out 
into  another  cloister,  and  rejoined  Tom  Arnold  in  the 
reading-room  of  the  College. 

'  What  was  the  upshot  of  the  whole It  left  the 
impression,  not  of  unhappiness  or  dissatisfaction,  but  of  a 
totally  wasted  life,  unable  to  read,  glancing  at  questions 
which  he  could  not  handle,  rejoicing  in  the  caution  of  the 
Court  of  Rome,  which  had  (like  the  Privy  Council)  kept 
open  question  after  question  that  he  enumerated  as  having 
been  brought  before  it ;  also,  although  without  the  old 
bitterness,  still  the  ancient  piteous  cry,  "O  my  mother! 
why  dost  thou  leave  us  all  day  idle  in  the  market-place  " 
Studiously  courteous,  studiously  calm.' 


CHAP.  XXIV    DAILY  LIFE  AT  WESTMINSTER 


343 


His  autumn  holiday  ended,  Stanley  found  himself  fully 
immersed  in  the  various  duties,  occupations,  and  interests 
which  gathered  round  his  literary  work,  his  official  position, 
the  pursuit  of  his  religious  and  ecclesiastical  ideals. 

Stanley's  day  began  with  family  prayers,  consisting  of 
one  of  the  Psalms  of  the  day  and  a  simple  prayer,  put  to- 
gether by  himself  from  different  parts  of  the  Liturgy, 
containing  special  petitions  adapted  to  the  particular  needs 
of  any  member  of  his  household,  and  always,  after  his  wife's 
death,  concluding  with  the  benedictory  words  of  the  Prayer 
for  the  Church  Militant.  Breakfast,  at  nine  o'clock,  was  a 
meal  over  which  he  liked  to  linger  when  he  had  interest- 
ing guests  staying  in  the  house.  But  he  ate  scarcely  any- 
thing himself.  A  hard-boiled  egg,  from  which  his  wife  had 
peeled  the  shell,  two  slices  of  toast,  buttered  and  cut  into 
small  pieces,  and  tea,  satisfied  his  appetite.  Even  this 
morsel  he  would  forget  to  eat  if  he  became  absorbed  in  the 
conversation  or  immersed  in  the  'Times.' 

At  10.30  he  entered  the  library  with  the  letters  of  the 
day,  or  more  often  left  a  trail  of  papers  behind  him,  which 
had  to  be  gathered  up  by  his  wife  or  his  secretary. 
Begging-letters,  congratulations,  requests  for  tickets  of 
admission  to  the  Abbey,  anathemas,  and  remonstrances 
poured  in  upon  him.  Once  at  work,  he  dictated  letter 
after  letter  without  hesitation,  or  gave  clearly  and  shortly 
the  necessary  hint  for  the  answer.  After  his  correspond- 
ence was  finished  he  settled  down  to  the  lecture,  the 
article,  or  the  sermon  which  he  happened  to  be  writing. 
Nothing  disturbed  him  while  thus  occupied.  Questions 
were  asked  and  answered  without  apparently  interrupting 
him  in  his  task.  He  always  insisted  upon  a  reply  being 
sent  to  every  letter  that  he  received.  However  offensive 
the  language  of  the  writer  might  be,  he  never  passed  by 
the  communication,  but   always  returned   some  gentle 


344 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1864-70 


answer,  which  now  and  then,  to  his  great  dehght,  produced 
a  letter  of  regret. 

Luncheon,  unless  there  were  visitors,  was  a  frugal  meal, 
often  eaten  in  the  library  without  interruption  of  his  work. 
At  three  o'clock  he  attended  the  afternoon  service  in  the 
Abbey,  or  went  out,  either  for  a  walk,  or,  more  rarely,  for 
a  drive.  If  he  drove,  he  liked  to  be  set  down  to  walk 
home.  It  was  always  necessary  to  provide  an  object  for 
the  afternoon's  expedition  —  some  friend  to  be  visited,  some 
bit  of  old  London  to  be  explored,  some  picture  or  statue 
to  be  seen  in  a  gallery.  His  favourite  walks  were  down 
the  Embankment,  to  see  Mrs.  Vaughan  at  the  Temple,  or 
round  and  about  St.  James's  Park.  Sunday  was  observed 
with  old-fashioned  strictness.  Except  when  compelled  to 
do  so  by  some  distant  preaching  engagement,  he  never 
used  his  carriage.  Tea,  at  five  o'clock,  was  his  favourite 
meal  —  the  one  meal  with  which  he  could  not  dispense,  the 
only  one  that  he  remembered  for  himself.  Between  six 
and  eight  he  read  or  worked,  and  no  literary  work,  unless 
he  had  a  sermon  to  write  or  proof-sheets  to  correct,  was 
ever  done  after  dinner. 

Barely  a  year  had  elapsed  since  he  left  Oxford,  yet 
'Westminster,'  as  he  says,  'daily  grows  increasingly  dear.' 
His  life  was  fuller  and  more  crowded  than  it  had  ever  been 
before ;  but  his  marriage  made  the  increased  burden  light, 
for  it  brought  out  the  strength  and  dignity  of  his  character, 
while  it  restored  the  lightness  and  vivacity  of  earlier  times. 
He  drew  fresh  vigour  from  the  companionship  of  a  wife 
who  made  herself  one  with  him  to  an  extraordinary  degree, 
who  threw  herself  heart  and  soul  into  all  his  work  and 
aspirations,  whose  power  of  understanding  others  was  as 
strong  as  it  was  quick,  and  whose  sympathy  was  at  once 
ready  and  real,  wide  yet  always  individual,  tender  but  at 
the  same  time  intensely  practical.    Strong  in  her  self- 


CHAP.  XXIV 


LADV  AUGUSTA  STANLEY 


345 


control,  no  passionate  or  unguarded  word  ever  escaped  her 
lips.  Admitted,  as  she  was,  to  the  most  intimate  confidence 
of  the  Queen,  she  showed  a  devotion  to  her  royal  mistress 
and  friend  which  was  not  less  remarkable  for  its  silence 
than  for  its  fidelity.  Uniting  the  warm  heart  of  a  woman 
to  the  instinct  of  a  statesman,  she  laboured  to  do  good  to 
all  around  her,  without  a  tinge  of  party  spirit,  and  without 
a  thought  of  petty  interests.  Gay,  cheerful,  keenly  enjoy- 
ing life,  she  inspired  brightness  and  hope  by  her  presence. 
Helpful  to  all  with  whom  she  came  in  contact,  full  of 
kindly  thought  for  everyone  but  herself,  she  was  one  of 
those  women  on  whom  her  friends  knew  that  they  could 
count,  with  a  certainty  that  she  would  not  fail.  The  sim- 
ple, easy,  genuine  courtesy  with  which  she  received  all 
who  came  to  her  house  was  never  omitted  from  hurry  or 
from  preoccupation.  The  small  acts  of  thoughtful  kindness, 
which  are  especially  grateful  to  the  humble  or  obscure,  were 
never  neglected,  and  her  gracious  welcome,  extended  alike 
to  all  ranks  —  to  the  uninteresting  as  well  as  to  the  interest- 
ing—  filled  the  Deanery  with  an  atmosphere  of  sunshine. 

The  charm  of  her  character  was  felt  over  such  a  circle 
as  few  of  her  sex  have  ever  influenced.  Living,  as  she 
habitually  did,  under  the  influence  of  high  thoughts  and 
motives,  it  was  impossible,  in  spite  of  her  habitual  reserve 
on  such  sacred  subjects,  not  to  feel  sensible  of  the  depth 
and  purpose  which  lay  at  the  heart  of  her  religion,  and  of 
the  secret  strength  of  conscience  and  faith,  which  revealed 
itself  in  the  quickness  of  her  inexhaustible  sympathy. 
'There  was  a  light  of  the  other  world'  —  to  quote  the 
words  of  the  late  Dean  Church  —  '  shining  within,  and  from 
time  to  time  disclosing  itself  in  a  tone  or  a  look.'  Her  love 
of  children  and  devotion  to  the  poor  and  suffering  in  West- 
minster were  only  natural  links  in  the  chain  of  a  life  of  un- 
conscious, yet  absolute,  self-surrender,  and  of  service  for 


34<5 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1 864-70 


others,  both  great  and  small.  She  was  not  only  a  good,  but 
a  great,  woman.  From  two  defects  which  are  sometimes 
conspicuous  in  religious  women  of  devoted  lives — feeble- 
ness of  mind  and  strength  of  prejudice  —  she  was  entirely 
free.  Her  judgment  was  as  wise,  her  counsel  as  sound, 
as  her  heart  was  warm  and  loving.  'Defects,'  as  Mr. 
Locker-Lampson  wrote  of  his  sister-in-law,  '  she  had,  which 
is  only  to  say  that  she  was  human  ;  but  these  were  so 
kept  under,  so  hidden  away,  that  one  could  only  surmise 
them.'  There  remains  in  Stanley's  handwriting  a  transla- 
tion of  Luther's  description  of  an  angel,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  to  whom  he  applied  the  description  : 

'  An  angel's  is  a  fine,  tender,  kind  heart,  as  if  we  could 
find  a  man  or  woman  who  had  a  heart  sweet  all  through, 
and  a  gentle  will,  without  subtlety,  yet  of  sound  reason. 
He  who  has  seen  such  has  colours  wherewith  to  picture  to 
himself  what  an  angel  is.' 

Dependent  as  Stanley  always  was  on  female  companion- 
ship, sympathy,  and  attention,  his  wife  wove  herself  into  the 
very  fabric  of  his  life.  There  was  between  them  a  division 
of  labour  like  that  which  was  made  in  all  his  foreign  tours. 
Everything  was  to  be  done  for  him,  and  all  arrangements 
made  to  suit  him  ;  but  he  was  to  supply  the  interests,  in- 
tellectual, moral,  historical,  geographical,  that  gave  vitality 
to  the  expedition.  So,  generally,  he  was  entirely  dependent 
on  his  wife  in  all  the  minor  matters  of  existence  ;  but  he 
made  the  richness  of  her  life  by  pouring  out  for  her  freely 
all  the  treasures  of  his  mind  and  heart.  With  tender  care 
and  solicitude  she  watched  over  the  health  and  comfort  of 
one  who,  even  in  the  most  essential  points  of  food  and 
dress,  was  incapable  of  taking  care  of  himself.  Morning 
after  morning  they  worked  together  in  the  library  at  the 
Deanery,  the  wife  seated,  with  her  books,  papers,  and  let- 
ters a  few  feet  from  the  spot  where  he  stood  at  his  desk 


CHAP.  XXIV      STANLEY'S  PERSONAL  CHARM  347 


accomplishing  his  daily  task  of  Jewish  history,  sermon, 
lecture,  article,  or  correspondence.  Always  effacing  her- 
self in  order  to  bring  him  forward.  Lady  Augusta  was 
only  eager  that  his  work,  his  name,  his  brilliant  gifts, 
should  be  known  and  appreciated.  Both  were  full  of 
energy.  Well-mated  —  perhaps,  as  Mr.  Locker-Lampson 
says,  '  too  well-mated  ' — each  abetted  and  stimulated  the 
other  to  fresh  exertions,  until  in  her  case  first,  and  then  in 
his,  exhausted  nature  yielded  to  the  strain. 

In  the  companionship  of  such  a  wife  all  Stanley's  social 
gifts  were  developed  to  the  utmost.  Few  persons  came 
into  contact  with  him  without  being  affected  by  his  win- 
ning charm.  Dreaded  and  disliked  as  he  was,  in  conse- 
quence of  his  opinions,  in  many  homes  in  England,  he  had 
few,  if  any,  personal  enemies.  But  the  fascination  of  his 
presence  is  more  easily  remembered  than  described.  It 
was  blended  of  physical,  mental,  and  moral  characteristics. 
It  lay  partly  in  the  slight,  shadowy  figure,  the  rare  beauty 
of  his  smile,  the  refined  alertness  of  his  delicate,  expressive 
face,  the  well-bred  courtesy  of  his  manner ;  the  rapidity  of 
his  quick,  eager  movements,  which  suggested  that  he  im(st 
find,  and  communicate  to  others  what  he  sought ;  the  quaint, 
endearing  dependence  which  gave  an  almost  pathetic  touch 
to  his  appearance.  It  consisted  still  more  in  the  wide  range 
of  his  ready  sympathies,  in  the  share  that  he  claimed  in 
every  healthy  form  of  human  interests,  in  his  eagerness  to 
gain  and  impart  knowledge,  in  his  constant  endeavour  to 
discover  something  that  was  excellent  in  the  most  impop- 
ular  of  characters  or  of  works.  It  was  heightened  by  his 
sunny  vivacity,  his  active  imagination,  his  picturesqueness 
as  a  raconteur,  his  ready  command  of  appropriate  anecdote, 
felicitous  illustrations,  or  apt  quotations.  Most  of  all  it  lay 
in  the  charm  of  purity  and  simplicity,  of  nobility  of  senti- 
ment and  original  innocence  of  soul  —  in  the  charm  of  a 


348 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1864-70 


chivalrous  nature,  that  was  free  from  vanity  or  jealousy, 
full  of  genuine  enthusiasm  for  all  that  was  good  and  pure 
—  a  nature  which  harboured  nothing  mean  nor  sordid,  and 
which  strove  for  truth  and  loved  justice  with  a  veritable 
passion. 

The  Deanery  of  Westminster  soon  became  the  centre  of 
an  ever-widening  circle  of  social  influence.  No  ill-natured 
sarcasms  or  gossip  at  the  expense  of  others  were  tolerated 
within  its  walls.  Master  and  mistress  showed  in  an  un- 
mistakable manner  that,  however  witty  or  amusing  might 
be  the  form  of  expression,  such  topics  of  conversation  were 
uncongenial  to  the  spirit  of  the  house.  The  doors  of  the 
Deanery  were  open  to  all  comers.  In  society,  as  well  as 
in  ecclesiastical  politics  or  theological  controversy,  Stanley 
habitually  made  toleration  a  living  principle  of  conduct. 
His  heart  and  his  lip,  his  public  and  private  life,  were  in 
complete  harmony.  Under  his  roof  Church  dignitaries, 
who  an  hour  before  had  denounced  their  host  in  Convoca- 
tion with  unmeasured  vehemence,  learned  to  love  him  as 
a  man  as  heartily  as  they  abhorred  him  as  a  theologian. 
Here  gathered  foreign  ecclesiastics  of  every  country  and 
every  shade  of  Christian  creed.  Here  Nonconformists 
forgot  their  bitterness  in  the  social  recognition  which 
levelled  the  barriers  of  estrangement  and  ho.stility.  Here 
was  softened  that  rancour  which  harshness  and  neglect 
engender  in  the  conscientious,  if  mistaken,  sufferers  from 
theological  conflicts.  Here,  too,  and  not  least  of  all,  he 
delighted  to  gather  the  artisans  and  working-men  whose 
intelligent  reverence  for  the  Abbey  and  its  precincts  it 
was  his  own  and  his  wife's  greatest  pleasure  to  elicit. 

The  welcome  which  the  Deanery  offered  to  men  of 
widely  varying  interests  and  professions  was  something 
more  than  the  outcome  of  an  insatiable  desire  for  informa- 
tion :  it  was  the  natural  result  of  Stanley's  habit  of  regard- 


CHAP.  XXIV 


FOREIGN  TOUR  IN  1865 


349 


ing  life.  Not  only  was  he  'keen  as  a  hound  in  pursuit  of 
knowledge,'  but  all  men,  whatever  their  special  pursuits, 
appeared  to  his  historical  imagination  and  his  instinctive 
love  of  man  as  necessary  links  in  the  endless  human  pro- 
cession, each  bearing  some  gift,  great  or  small,  towards  the 
shrine  of  the  Divine  purpose.  Hence  it  was  that  he  could 
welcome  the  musician  or  the  man  of  science,  though  he  felt 
no  personal  interest  in  their  arts  and  occupations,  as  sin- 
cerely and  as  eagerly  as  the  leaders  of  literature,  whom  he 
met  on  equal  terms  and  as  a  master  of  their  craft. 

With  the  Deanery  of  Westminster  for  his  home,  and  in 
the  companionship  of  his  wife,  in  the  midst  of  new  inter- 
ests and  surrounded  by  increased  opportunities  of  influence, 
Stanley  recovered  all  his  former  energy.  He  so  habitually 
poured  out  his  thoughts  into  the  ear  of  the  public  through 
his  books,  sermons,  addresses,  and  speeches,  th^t  scarcely 
any  additional  light  is  thrown  upon  his  opinions  by  his 
private  letters.  But  his  correspondence  with  his  sister 
Mary,  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley,  or  friends  like  Hugh 
Pearson,  Professor  Jowett,  and  many  others,  fills  up  the 
outline  of  his  personal  history. 

In  August  he  and  his  wife  left  England  for  their  autumn 
holiday,  which  opened  with  a  visit  to  the  Queen  of  Holland 
at  Herzogenbosch.  '  Her  consideration  and  her  intelligence 
are,'  he  says,  'for  her  position,  very  remarkable.'  The 
visit  ended,  they  travelled  northwards  to  Amsterdam.  The 
famous  galleries  are  barely  mentioned.  '  Saw  the  pictures  ' 
is  the  scanty  notice  with  which  they  are  dismissed.  Broek, 
'  the  cleanest  village  in  Europe  ' ;  Purmerend  and  its  dairies, 
'as  clean  as  a  drawing-room';  Schardam,  'with  its  army 
of  700  windmills,  every  one  whirling  its  arms  round  with 
incredible  activity,'  —  each  in  their  several  ways  delighted 
him.  Reaching  Utrecht  at  7  p.m.,  after  a  long  day's 
travelling  and  sightseeing,  he  at  once  sallied  forth,  without 


350 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


his  dinner,  in  search  of  the  Jansenist  archbishop,  with 
difficulty  found  him,  and  then  had  an  interview  with  him 
and  his  chaplain  which  lasted  till  lo  p.m.  'The  whole 
position  of  their  Church  is  so  singular,'  he  says,  'that  I  am 
very  glad  to  have  seen  them,  and  to  have  verified  with  my 
own  eyes  that  they  really  existed.' 

From  Holland  the  travellers  made  their  way  to  Baden, 
to  stay  with  Mr.  Baillie  and  his  wife,  Lady  Frances  Baillie, 
the  sister  of  Lady  Augusta  Stanley.  '  The  dear  children,' 
he  says,  '  were  all  asleep  in  their  little  beds  when  we 
arrived,  but  we  shall  see  them  to-morrow.'  Baden,  revisited 
after  thirty  years,^  brought  back  a  rush  of  recollections. 
'  I  was  charmed,'  he  writes  to  his  sister  Mary, 

'  to  find  myself  unexpectedly  once  again  at  the  foot  of  the 
old  stone  crucifix,  commanding  a  beautiful  view  over  the 
valley.  Do  you  remember  sitting  there  with  me,  dearest, 
and  reading  that  poem  in  the  "Christian  Year"^  ending 

So  all  God  does,  if  rightly  understood, 
Shall  work  thy  final  good  ? 

I  recollect  thinking  it  so  appropriate  to  the  scene.  I  read 
it  again  when  I  came  home.  How  much  more  it  now 
expresses  to  both  of  us  than  then  —  children  as  we  were ! ' 

At  Baden  he  met  the  Queen  of  Prussia,  afterwards  the 
Empress  Augusta. 

'  On  Wednesday  we  went  to  tea  with  the  Princess 
Hohenlohe,  the  Queen  of  Prussia,  alone,  coming  in  the 
evening.  The  Queen  in  public  is  very  stately,  full  of  set 
phrases.  But  on  this  occasion  she  sate  down,  and  poured 
forth  a  continuous  flow  of  questions  to  me  to  be  answered, 
listening  very  attentively  to  me  till  I  had  finished  my 
answer,  and  then  beginning  a  new  question. 

'  These  were  some  of  the  questions  :  —  (i)  How  old  is  the 
world  ?  (2)  What  is  the  oldest  portion  of  the  human  race } 
(3)  What  difference  is  there  between  the  Jews  in  Palestine 
and  the  Jews  in  Europe,  and  do  they  retain  their  ancient 


5  Vol.  i.  chap.  vi.  p.  165. 
Twentieth  Sunday  after  Trinity. 


CHAP.  XXIV        THIRLWALL  AT  SJ:  DAV/D'S 


usages  ?  (4)  Are  there  any  likenesses  between  the  Jewish 
religion  and  the  Egyptian  ?  (5)  What  are  the  advantages 
or  disadvantages  of  the  Empress  Eugenie's  plan  for  re- 
building the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  ?  (6)  What  are 
the  results  of  Tischendorf's  discovery  of  the  Sinaitic  MS.  } 
'Each  of  these  questions,  stated  at  great  length  and 
with  much  precision,  certainly  gave  me  a  considerable 
notion  of  her  knowledge  and  intelligence.  When  she  had 
finished,  she  rose  and  bade  us  an  affectionate  farewell. 
During  the  whole  of  the  time  (I  think  it  must  have  been 
nearly  two  hours)  no  one  spoke  except  the  questioner  and 
the  answerer.' 

From  Baden  they  made  their  way  to  Venice,  passing 
through  the  Dolomites,  then  an  almost  unexplored  country. 
Coming  back  through  North  Italy,  and  Switzerland,  and 
the  North  of  France,  they  reached  England  at  the  begin- 
ning of  October  1865.  They  returned  to  pay  a  long- 
promised  visit  to  Bishop  Thirlwall  at  Abergwili.  Stanley's 
letter  describing  the  place  and  his  pilgrimage  to  St.  David's 
is  written  to  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley,  and  is  dated  '  The 
Mouth  of  the  Winding  River,  near  the  Castle  of  Merlin.' 
'  You  may  remember,'  he  says, 

'  this  enchanted  grove.  It  is  described,  not  quite  accurately, 
in  the  "  Faery  Queen,"  where  Merlin  left  his  workmen  to 
build  the  large  wall.  It  is  the  spot  where,  although  our 
Laureate  seems  not  to  have  known  it,  the  ancient  Wizard 
was  lured  away  by  Vivien,  and  has  not  since  been  seen  by 
mortal  eyes.  It  is  the  spot,  however,  where,  as  I  think,  he 
still  lives  in  the  shape  of  a  new  Merlin,  a  wise  old  sage,  to 
whom  all  learning  is  known,  from  the  most  ancient  records 
of  Egypt  and  Nineveh  to  the  last  German  novel  or  Dutch 
poem.  To  this  wizard,  by  a  spell  long  ago  set  at  work,  we 
have  been  brought  this  year,  fearing  that  by  postponing 
the  visit  to  another  time  we  might  never  come  at  all. 

'  He,  too,  was  once  under  the  glamour  of  a  wily  one,  but 
that  is  now  broken,  and  he  is  himself  again.  You  doubtless 
remember  who  that  Vivien  was  —  Samuel  of  Oxford. 

*  It  is  charming  to  see  him  surrounded  by  his  books  of 
every  kind,  and  always  with  one  of  them  in  his  hands, 
going  every  evening  to  feed  his  swans  and  ducks  in  the 
pond  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden. 


352 


LIFE  OF  DEAN'  STANLEY 


'  Above  the  house  rises  the  hill  of  the  old  Merlin. 
From  its  weird  summit  you  see  the  Castle  or  Tower  of 
Merlin,  Caer-Merddin  (Car-Marthen),  which  is  on  some 
1 2th  of  August  to  be  swept  away  by  a  flood  of  the  river 
Towy,  which,  nevertheless,  will  spare  this  secluded  nest  by 
the  mouth  of  the  VVili  (Abergwili)  ;  and  down  the  valley, 
on  the  other  side,  you  behold  Grongar  Hill  (and  Dynas 
Vawr),  where  Madoc  wandered,  and  the  Golden  Grove, 
where  another  Merlin  worked  in  his  retirement  at  the  same 
great  work  as  this  Merlin,  "The  Liberty  of  Prophesying." 
Truly  it  is  a  very  classic  vale,  this  Vale  of  the  Towy. 

'But  we  had  yet  a  further  pilgrimage  to  make,  to  the 
shrine  of  St.  David  ;  you  know  that  in  the  Middle  Ages  it 
was  thought  that  two  pilgrimages  to  St.  David's  were  worth 
one  to  Rome  ;  and,  indeed,  well  it  might  be,  for  even  now 
it  is  twice  as  difficult  to  get  there.  However,  it  is  now 
accomplished,  and  well  is  it  worth  the  double,  double  toil 
and  trouble  of  reaching  it.  At  break  of  day,  before  sun- 
rise, we  started  from  Haverford  West  —  it  was  the  last  of 
our  light  sunshiny  days  —  up  hill  and  down  steep  dales,  till 
at  length,  in  the  wilderness,  we  reached  the  sacred  city. 
Still,  however,  the  sacred  precinct  lay  concealed  till  we 
came  to  the  crest  of  the  beacon  where  it  lies  hid. 

'  There  was  the  deep  slope  of  the  churchyard  from 
which,  if  you  take  a  piece  of  turf,  and  stand  with  it  on  the 
seashore,  you  will  see  the  Green  Island  of  the  Blessed. 
(Herewith  is  a  tuft  of  its  grass.)  There  was  the  long  pile 
of  the  cathedral  where  lies  St.  David,  and  Edmund  Tudor, 
father  of  Henry  VH.,  and  our  old  friend  Giraldus,  and 
Silvester  the  Pilgrim,  whose  medicinal  art  could  not  ward 
off  death.  There  were  the  seven  sisters,  each  as  ugly  as 
the  others.  There  is  the  tower  which  disturbed  the  dreams 
of  Gilbert  Scott.  And  there  is  the  palace  built  by  Bishop 
Gower,  with  a  prospect  beautiful  to  behold,  and  its  halls 
occupied  by  Bishop  Anselm,  who  with  its  land  portioned 
out,  they  say,  his  five  daughters  in  wedlock  to  five  bishops. 
And  there  is  the  little  stream  of  the  Allan,  across  which 
lay  the  stone  which  cracked  itself  by  speaking  when  once 
a  corpse  passed  over  it,  and  over  which  Henry  H.  boldly 
stepped,  though  warned  that  he  would  be  slain  in  doing  so. 

'  And  far  away  we  struggled,  through  wind  and  sun,  to 
St.  David's  Head.  What  rocks !  what  creeks !  what  cir- 
cles !  what  ramparts  !  what  a  cromlech  !  what  a  view  !  — 


CHAP.  XXIV     DEATH  OF  LORD  PALMERSTON 


353 


far  away  where  St.  Patrick  saw  the  vision  of  his  future 
labours  in  Ireland.  And  on  the  other  side,  above  that  pur- 
ple cave,  is  the  ruined  chapel  of  the  poor  nun  —  you  know 
her  well,  I  doubt  not,  the  mother  of  St.  David  —  who 
there,  in  the  midst  of  storm  and  thunder,  gave  birth  to  the 
babe  that  ought  never  to  have  been  born  ;  and  close  by  is 
her  well,  still  used,  and  visited  on  her  day,  the  2nd  of 
March  ;  and  out  of  it  I  picked  these  leaves,  and  from  its 
side  this  fern.' 

From  St.  David's  he  travelled  to  Scotland,  whence  he 
was  recalled  by  the  intelligence  of  the  death  of  Lord 
Palmerston.  He  hurried  back  for  the  funeral,  which  was 
held  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  October  27th,  1865.  'The 
spectacle,'  he  says, 

'was  very  grand  —  the  ten  Cabinet  Ministers,  so  different 
each  from  each,  standing  by  the  open  vault,  Lord  Russell 
in  advance  of  the  rest,  filled  with  unutterable  thoughts ; 
and  then,  as  the  service  drew  to  an  end,  came  "the 
despairing  storm,"  which  wrapped  us  all  in  one  dark  fu- 
neral pall.' 

The  sermon,"  which  he  preached  on  the  Sunday  follow- 
ing the  funeral,  was  'a  very  difficult  and  delicate  task. 
The  occasion  was  greater  than  the  man.'  But  the  tribute 
which  he  paid  to  the  memory  of  the  deceased  statesman 
was  singularly  just.  In  him  he  saw  an  embodiment  of 
that  power  of  rising  above  party  spirit  which  he  himself 
always  regarded  as  the  cure  for  religious  strife.  The 
thought  that  guided  Lord  Palmerston's  public  life  was  his 
unfailing  concern  for  the  greatness  of  England.  '  He 
was,'  he  said, 

'an  Englishman  even  to  excess.  It  was  England,  rather 
than  any  special  party  in  England  —  it  was  the  honour 
and  interests  of  England,  rather  than  even  the  Constitu- 
tion, or  the  State,  or  the  Church  of  England,  that  fired  his 
imagination,  and  stimulated  his  efforts,  and  secured  his 
fame.    To  England,  and  to  no  lesser  interest,  the  vast 


' '  Lord  Palmerston  '  (^Sermons  on  Special  Occasions). 
VOL.  II  A  A 


354 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


length  of  that  laborious  life,  with  whatsoever  shortcomings, 
was  in  all  simplicity  and  faithfulness  devoted.' 

The  autumn  holiday  of  1866  began  with  a  series  of 
visits  in  France,  and  ended  with  Florence  and  Rome. 
'  Arthur,'  writes  Lady  Augusta  to  her  sister-in-law  from 
Florence,  '  was  rather  low  at  the  prospect  of  five  days  in 
this  city  of  pictures,  but  got  over  it  better  than  he  ex- 
pected.' 'The  only  fresh  place,'  he  tells  his  sister,  '  which 
I  saw  was,  I  think,  "  Vallombrosa."  '  He  sends  a  long 
description  of  the  spot  to  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley  : 

'  Here  is  the  spot  from  which  a  letter  must  be  begun 
to  you.  Here  are  the  "autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the 
brooks  in  Vallombrosa,  where  th'  Etrurian  shades,  high 
overarch'd,  imbower."  ^  Do  you  not  think  that  Milton's 
visit  to  Florence  is  one  of  the  most  poetical  incidents  of 
his  life  Then  and  there  he  met  the  blind  old  Galileo, 
suffering  from  the  effects  of  the  Inquisition,  "The  Tuscan 
Artist,"  who  from  the  "  top  of  Fiesole  "  explored  the  moon, 
—  himself  before  he  wrote  those  lines  to  become  blind 
also.  And  then  it  was  that  he  made  that  same  journey  to 
Vallombrosa  which  we  have  now  made,  and  of  which  the 
recollection  must  have  been  treasured  up  in  his  mind, 
through  all  the  thirty  years  of  civil  war,  and  poverty,  and 
blindness,  till  it  came  out  in  these  verses,  which  are,  as 
you  shall  hear,  as  exact  as  if  he  had  written  them  on  the 
spot  to-day. 

'It  was  with  us,  as  with  him,  on  an  "autumnal"  day 
that  the  peasants  on  one  of  the  "  Etrurian  Mountains," 
who  were  feeding,  Gurth-like,  their  swine  under  the  shade 
of  the  chestnut-trees,  or  beating  down  the  chestnuts  from 
the  spreading  branches,  saw  a  man  and  woman  walking  up 
the  stony  path  which  now,  as  doubtless  in  Milton's  time, 
leads  from  the  foot  of  the  hill  to  the  Convent.  These 
were  your  cousins  Arthur  and  Augusta  ;  we  left  our  car- 
riage at  a  small  hamlet,  and  made  this  delightful  walk  of 
two  hours  in  the  cool  of  a  beautiful  evening. 

'  Every  feature  of  the  scene  agrees.  The  "  Etrurian 
shades,"  which  give  the  name  to  the  "  Valley  of  Shades  " 

*  Paradise  Lost,  i.  302. 


CHAP.  XXIV 


VALLOMBROSA 


355 


(Vallis  Umbrosa),  are,  first,  wide  glades  of  chestnuts,  suc- 
ceeded by  a  dark  belt  of  pines,  above  which  again,  crowning 
the  crest  of  the  hill,  brown  and  purple  with  the  tints  of 
autumn,  is  a  forest  of  beech.  The  "leaves"  are  chiefly 
from  the  chestnuts,  "  strewn  "  about  in  every  direction,  not 
merely  from  the  October  winds,  but  from  the  havoc  of  the 
chestnut-gatherers,  of  whom  I  have  just  spoken.  They 
are  "strewn"  on  the  "brooks,"  which  are  an  essential 
characteristic  of  the  place ;  indeed,  its  first  name  was 
"Acqua  Bella."  Its  springs  and  rivulets  burst  forth  in 
every  little  glen,  falling  in  cascades,  whose  murmur  must 
have  murmured  on  in  Milton's  ears  as  it  murmured  in  ours. 
And  down  on  these  clear  rills  and  polished  stone  were 
showered  the  falling  leaves  from  right  and  left.  "  High 
overarch'd"  and  most  deeply  "  imbowered "  are  the  tall 
pines,  shooting  up  like  the  columns  of  endless  naves  and 
transepts  ;  and  through  these  we  reached  the  Convent, 
which  lies  between  them  and  the  purple  crown  of  beeches. 

'  As  you  look  from  Florence  you  can  just  see  a  white 
spot,  like  a  star  in  the  night,  gleaming  from  the  dark  bosom 
of  the  mountains  ;  that  is  the  upper  convent,  "  the  Paradi- 
sino,"  as  it  is  called,  perched  on  a  craggy  rock  overlooking 
the  whole  plain  of  the  Arno ;  the  dome  of  Florence 
Cathedral  just  visible,  and  the  range  of  the  Carrara  hills 
rising  beyond.  The  lower  and  larger  convent  is  a  huge 
modern  building,  of  the  date  of  1637.  This  or  1638  is 
the  very  year  of  Milton's  visit ;  he  must  have  arrived  just 
at  the  moment  of  its  completion,  and  slept  in  the  very 
apartments  still  used  for  travellers.  Some  kind  soul  has 
put  there,  in  memory  of  him,  a  photograph  of  the  fallen 
Angels  in  the  "  Paradise  Lost." 

'  But,  alas  for  Vallombrosa !  it  was  a  melancholy  day 
for  the  poor  monks  when  we  arrived  :  it  was  the  last  day 
of  their  possession.  As  we  toiled  up  the  last  ascent  through 
the  pine-forest,  we  met  a  cavalcade  coming  down  the  hill : 
a  grand  dignitary  in  front,  on  horseback  —  others,  some  on 
horses,  some  drawn  in  baskets  by  huge  white  oxen.  These, 
as  we  learned  on  reaching  the  Convent,  were  the  Prior  and 
the  Government  officers,  to  whom  he  had  just  made  over 
the  keys  and  the  title-deeds  of  the  monastery,  and  we  found 
only  three  or  four  left  to  take  charge  of  the  buildings  for 
the  next  few  weeks,  before  their  final  departure.  They 
were  sadly  cast  down  ;  they  had  been  there  twenty-five  or 


356 


UFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1 866 


twenty-eight  years,  and  now  had  to  retire  on  their  little 
pensions,  and  leave  the  beautiful  haunts  of  so  many  years. 
It  quite  grieved  our  hearts  to  see  them  and  think  of 
them. 

'  So,  I  suppose,  departed  the  monks  of  Glastonbury  and 
Westminster  300  years  ago.  But  Westminster  has  still 
remained  with  something  worthy  of  its  great  name  ;  and 
Vallombrosa  will  in  a  few  years  be  nothing  but  a  name. 
I  could  not  help  thinking  whether  our  turn  would  ever 
come  again,  and  Westminster  also  be  a  desert.  "  Light 
be  the  hand  of  ruin  laid  !  "  ' 

It  was  at  Florence  that,  in  October  1866,  Stanley  read 
in  '  Galignani '  the  news  of  Bishop  Cotton's  death  ^  ;  and  it 
was  from  Florence  that  he  sent  to  the  '  Times  '  an  obituary 
notice  of  his  friend.  He  carried  with  him,  as  he  said,  'a 
heavy  burden '  when  he  left  Florence  for  Rome.  '  The 
blank,  the  marvel,  remain  the  same.  Only,  how  rapidly 
one  becomes  familiar  with  an  event  which  at  first  seemed 
so  incredible  ! '  Rome  was  reached  in  the  third  week  of 
October  1866.  The  Imperial  City  exercised  over  him  all 
its  old  fascination,  and  his  pleasure  was  doubled,  not  only 
by  the  companionship  of  his  wife,  but  by  the  society  of 
Mr.  Gladstone.  His  second  letter  to  his  sister  is  written 
from  '51  Piazza  di  Spagna.'  'We  have  moved  here,'  he 
begins, 

'from  our  hotel.  The  Gladstones  were  so  kindly  urgent 
about  it,  and  the  advantages  of  the  situation  so  great,  that 
we  determined  to  try  the  experiment,  and  it  completely 
answers.  They  are  on  the  second,  we  on  the  third,  floor. 
The  dining-room  is  on  the  third  floor,  and  we  have  hitherto 
always  dined  together.  This  is  the  only  time  when  we 
necessarily  meet  ;  but  very  pleasant  it  is.  He  is  so  ex- 
tremely enjoying  his  liberty.' 

His  own  enjoyment  was  extreme.  '  The  charm  of 
Rome'  seemed  to  him  'greater  than  ever.'    Time  passed 

^  See  p.  252.  * 


CHAP.  XXIV 


ROME  IN  1866 


357 


too  rapidly  in  exploring  every  point  of  interest  —  the  Cat- 
acombs with  Rossi,  the  excavations  on  the  Palatine  with 
Rosa,  the  Roman  churches  and  Albano  with  '  the  Oxford 
antiquary,  Parker.'  '  Another  week  flown,  and  only  one 
more  left  ! '  he  writes  on  November  5th.  'You  can  under- 
stand how  we  count  each  day  that  remains.'  In  Monsignor 
Nardi  he  made  a  new  and  delightful  acquaintance.  '  He  is 
one  of  the  most  curious  persons  I  ever  fell  in  with  —  so  very 
acute,  so  very  amusing,  such  a  centre  of  extraordinary 
stories.  I  doubt  whether  any  such  person  could  exist  out 
of  Rome.'  Meanwhile  the  interest  of  the  political  situation 
increased  every  day.  It  was  doubtful  whether  the  Pope 
would  remain  at  the  Vatican  if  the  French  troops  were 
withdrawn.  The  alarm  of  the  high  Papal  party,  and  the 
hopes  of  the  Italian  nationalists,  both  combined  to  indicate 
the  point  to  which  they  thought  affairs  would  converge  if 
the  French  soldiers  left.  '  It  is  very  hard,'  writes  Lady 
Augusta  as  the  time  for  their  departure  drew  near,  '  on 
Arthur,  having  to  leave  Rome  at  this  moment,  for  he  dearly 
loves  a  crisis.' 

On  the  Festival  of  All  Souls'  Day  (November  2nd)  he 
with  difficulty  obtained  admission  into  the  Sistine  Chapel. 
'  I  had,'  he  writes, 

'adopted  Hohl's  advice'  (the  courier),  'and  converted  my 
frock-coat  into  a  "frac  noir  "  ;  but  nothing  would  induce 
the  guards  to  let  me  in,  not  even  all  the  solicitations  of 
Nardi.  So  I  went  back  with  my  American  to  the  Hotel 
d'Angleterre,  where  he  caught  a  friend  who  lent  me  his 
coat  —  much  too  large,  but  the  right  cut  —  which  at  once 
enabled  me  to  get  in. 

'  Presently  Gladstone  came  with  Sir  Stephen  Glynne. 
Sir  Stephen  was  properly  dressed,  and  passed.  But  Glad- 
stone was  in  the  same  condition  as  I  had  been,  and  not  all 
his  arguments  in  his  best  Italian  would  induce  the  guards 
to  concede  the  point.  "We  have,"  they  said,  "just  refused 
to  admit  Lord  Stanley  on  the  same  grounds."    So  he  re- 


358 


LTFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


mained  outside  till  two  cardinals  of  his  acquaintance,  pass- 
ing by,  took  him  in.' 

The  interest  of  the  visit  to  Rome  culminated  in  a  private 
interview  with  Pope  Pius  IX.  Once  before  (in  1863),  in 
company  with  Hugh  Pearson,  he  had  had  a  similar  inter- 
view.   On  that  occasion  the  Pope  resisted 

'  with  dignified  courtesy  any  attempt  to  kiss  his  hand,  and 
pressed  us  down  upon  the  chairs,  where  we  sate  during 
the  colloquy.  Something  had  been  said  to  him  by  Mon- 
signor  Talbot,  who  introduced  us,  about  my  having  been 
with  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  the  East,  and  this  caused  him 
to  speak  of  the  Royal  Family  of  England. 

'  It  was  remarkable  that  he  never  could  remember  the 
title  or  name  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  He  called  him  Prince 
George,  and  after  one  or  two  futile  attempts  I  dropped 
the  efTort  to  set  him  right,  and  spoke  always  of  the  Prince 
Royal  of  England.  He  spoke  of  the  Queen,  and  said  that 
she  had  lately  had  a  great  misfortune  in  being  upset  out  of 
her  carriage  in  the  Highlands.  I  replied,  "  Yes  ;  but  her 
chief  misfortune  has  been  that  she  has  lately  lost  her  ex- 
cellent husband."  "Ah,  yes!"  he  said,  "that  may  be,  but 
nevertheless  it  is  a  great  misfortune  to  be  upset  out  of 
your  carriage." 

'  He  spoke  also  of  Oxford,  and  described,  on  the  name 
being  mentioned  to  him,  Faber.  I  do  not  think  any  of  the 
other  Oxford  names  were  familiar  to  him.  I  mentioned 
Samuel  Wilberforce,  the  Bishop.  But  he  only  said,  "  Ah  ! 
Wilberforce  !  he  is  one  of  the  Oxford  Professors."  The 
Bishop,  on  hearing  this  afterwards,  was  extremely  indig- 
nant, and  said,  "  It  shows  the  ignorance  of  the  man."  He 
finally  said,  "  You  know  Pusey  When  you  meet  him, 
give  him  this  message  from  me  —  that  I  compare  him  to  a 
bell,  which  always  sounds  to  invite  the  faithful  to  Church, 
and  itself  always  remains  outside."  ' 

On  the  occasion  of  the  second  interview  with  the  Pope, 
in  1866,  Stanley  was  accompanied  by  Sir  Stephen  Glynne. 

'  I  went  in  full  decanal  costume.  He  observed  and  took 
hold  of  the  cassock  which  I  wore.  He  said,  "  I  have  seen 
something  of  this  kind  before.    It  is  the  same  as  an  Eng- 


CHAP.  XXIV       INTERVIEW  WITH  PIO  NO  NO 


359 


lish  clergyman  once  wore  in  coming  to  see  me.  His  name 
was  Thompson."  We  spent  one  or  two  minutes  in  en- 
deavouring" to  ascertain  who  Thompson  could  be.  It  turned 
out  to  be  Townsend,  who  had  come  in  former  years  on  a 
mission  for  converting  the  Pope.  The  Pope  said,  with 
shouts  of  laughter,  "  And  what  do  you  suppose  he  came  to 
do.-*  —  the  most  ridiculous  thing  in  the  world,  to  attempt 
the  fusion  of  the  two  Churches.  What  nonsense  !  As  if 
in  matters  of  faith  you  could  make  exchanges.  In  matters 
of  politics  and  commerce  you  can  subtract  and  make  ex- 
changes, but  in  matters  of  religion,  in  matters  of  the  Seven 
Sacraments,  to  say  '  Take  five  and  leave  two '  —  quite 
ridiculous  !  " 

'  He  also  spoke  of  the  difficulty  of  understanding 
Townsend's  Latin.  Townsend,  in  fact,  had,  as  we  after- 
wards learnt,  insisted  on  speaking  in  Latin  with  the  English 
pronunciation,  so  that  he  said,  "  Sancte  Pater,"  which  the 
Pope  understood  to  be  "  Sancte  Peter,"  and  was  much 
gratified,  but  at  the  same  time  perplexed.  He  said,  "  It  is 
impossible  to  understand  the  pronunciation.  We  pro- 
nounce it  in  this  way"  —  and  he  then  repeated  the  first 
two  lines  of  the  "^Eneid." 

'  When  we  got  up  to  go  away,  and  I  knelt  to  kiss  his 
hand,  he  again  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  the  cassock  was  the 
same  which  he  had  seen  worn  by  "  Thompson  "  ;  and  so  we 
parted.' 

Stanley's  only  dream  which  he  thought  worthy  of 
record  was,  it  may  be  added,  that  he  was  himself  elected 
Pope.    He  thus  tells  the  dream  : 

'The  intelligence  of  my  election  was  communicated  to 
me  as  a  secret  not  to  be  known  till  the  next  day.  My 
immediate  difficulty  was,  what  name  I  should  take.  I 
thought  that  Paul  would  be  suitable,  as  he  was  the  British 
'Apostle.  But  then  the  last  Paul  was  Paul  V.  I  should  be 
Paul  VI.  ;  and  then  there  was  that  ill-omened  "  Six  "  which, 
as  the  Latin  distich  records,  has  ever  been  the  ruin  of 
Rome. 

'  In  this  mind  I  went  on,  after  asking  Hugh  Pearson,  to 
the  Athenaeum.  I  there  met  Jacobson,  the  Bishop  of 
Chester.  I  knew  by  the  turn  of  his  mouth  that  he  guessed 
my  secret.    "  Why  not  take  the  name  of  Gulielmus  .'' "  (his 


36o 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1 866 


own  name).  I  turned.  I  wrapt  myself  in  the  nearest  ap- 
proach that  I  could  find  to  the  great-coat  which  I  had  left 
behind  at  the  Athenaeum.  It  was  the  white  blanket  of  the 
bed.  I  walked  along  the  dusty  Flaminian  Way,  and  as  I 
proceeded  met  many  groups  of  cardinals.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  this  blanket  so  nearly  resembled  the  white  flannel 
gown  which  the  Pope  usually  wears,  that  the  secret  would 
be  known  before  its  publication  in  the  "Times"  the  next 
day,  and  in  that  agony  I  woke.' 

*  It  was  a  terrible  wrench  leaving  Rome,'  writes  Stanley 
to  his  sister  (November  I2th,  1866)  on  his  way  back  to 
England.  '  It  reminded  me  of  that  sudden  parting  in  1852.^*^ 
Such  extreme  enjoyment  abruptly  ceasing.'  Stopping  for 
a  few  days  in  Paris,  he  met  Dupanloup,  the  Bishop  of 
Orleans. 

'  He  was  very  agreeable,  different  from  what  I  had 
expected  —  more  gentle,  less  animated.  I  asked  him  about 
Pusey's  visit.  He  said  that  he  had  arrived  at  Orleans  at 
the  moment  when  the  Bishop  was  giving  a  party  of  thirty  — 
to  the  Prefect,  the  Mayor,  the  officers,  &c.,  &c.  Pusey  made 
himself  most  agreeable  to  them  all.  "  Si  je  puis  me  servir 
d'un  mot  mondain,  il  a  eu  un  grand  succ^s."  He  was 
most  interested  when  I  told  him  that  it  was  probably  the 
first  dinner-party  at  which  Pusey  had  been  for  twenty 
years.' 

The  year  1867  —  the  year  of  the  Sultan's  visit  to 
England  and  of  the  French  Exhibition  —  found  Stanley 
'  suffering  from  a  foolish,  harmless,  but  troublesome 
malady,  which  I  have  not  had  since  I  was  a  child  —  the 
shingles.'  In  March  the  Pan-Anglican  Synod  was  dis- 
cussed. '  You  will  see,'  he  writes,  '  that  I  have  given 
Convocation  my  mind  upon  the  subject,  which  is  afar  more 
dangerous  affair  than  all  the  green  and  red  garments  that 
ever  were  worn.'  Of  the  Sultan,  who  visited  England  in 
the  summer,  Stanley  saw  little.    It  was  expected  that  he 


1°  See  Vol.  i.  chap.  viii.  p.  438. 


CHAP.  XXIV  THE  RITUAL  COMMISSION 


361 


would  visit  Westminster  Abbey,  and  an  elaborate  pro- 
gramme was  prepared  for  his  reception  ;  but  he  never  came. 
*  My  own  views,'  says  Stanley, 

'  of  the  Grand  Turk  were  limited  to  a  tolerably  near  sight 
of  him  as  he  drove  in  through  the  Horse  Guards  on  the 
day  of  his  arrival,  as  he  drove  out  through  the  same  on 
this  (July  2 1st,  1867),  the  day  of  his  departure,  and  a  very 
distant  survey  of  him  at  the  Crystal  Palace.  I  had,  you 
know,  been  presented  to  him  at  Constantinople  in  1862. 
The  contrast  was  certainly  striking  enough  between  the 
impassable  statue,  which  only  moved  to  turn  away  from 
the  eyes  which  were  bowed  to  his,  and  the  inquisitive 
traveller,  himself  bowing  right  and  left,  and  gazing  with 
all  his  eyes  at  the  strange  world  around  him.' 

The  autumn  holiday  was  delayed  to  a  somewhat  later 
date  than  usual  by  the  work  of  the  Ritual  Commission. 
'The  Commission,'  he  writes  in  August  1867  to  Henry  de 
Bunsen, 

'  is  extremely  interesting  to  me,  and  may  eventually  be 
fruitful  of  most  important  results.  It  is  a  wonderful  school 
for  patience  and  statesmanship  ;  almost  every  single  state- 
ment about  it  that  has  appeared  in  the  newspapers  is  false.' 

To  his  pertinacity  was  mainly  due  the  curious  dis- 
covery of  the  original  copy  of  the  Prayer  Book,  the  MS. 
volume  appended  to,  and  forming  part  of,  the  Act  of  Uni- 
formity, and  the  original  of  the  Sealed  Books  deposited  in 
the  various  cathedrals.  The  volume  had  been  lost  since 
1825.  It  was  discovered,  at  the  end  of  the  summer  of 
1867,  in  a  closet  in  the  chief  clerk's  office  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  In  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  J.  N.  Simpkinson,  Stanley 
thus  describes  the  finding  of  the  volume  : 

'  It  had  been  removed  there  when  the  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment were,  in  1864,  transferred  from  the  ancient  Parliament 
Office,  or  Jewel  House,  in  the  precincts  of  the  Abbey  —  an 
old  square  tower  visible,  and  visible  only,  from  our  college 
garden  —  to  the  Victoria  Tower,  where  they  are  now  de- 
posited. 


362 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


'  In  searching  for  it,  or  rather  for  the  last  footsteps  of 
it,  in  these  two  towers  I  put  the  officers  of  the  House  of 
Lords  on  the  scent,  which,  to  my  great  surprise,  led  to  its 
almost  immediate  recovery. 

'  It  is  exceedingly  curious,  and  will,  I  expect,  when  care- 
fully examined,  throw  new  light  on  that  unfortunate  Set- 
tlement of  1662.  The  rubric  on  Ornaments,  which  is  not 
in  the  Irish  Prayer  Book,  is  (unfortunately)  in  the  original 
MS.  of  the  English.' 

When  at  length  he  left  England,  France  was  once  more 
the  scene  of  the  holiday,  which  began  with  a  visit  to  Paris 
and  to  the  Exhibition.  Stanley  and  his  wife  were  staying 
with  Madame  Mohl,  and  at  her  house  met  Thiers  for  the 
first  time. 

'The  conversation  turned  almost  entirely  upon  the 
alleged  discovery  by  M.  Chasles  of  the  correspondence 
between  Pascal  and  Newton  asserting  that  the  theory  of 
gravitation  was  due  to  the  French,  and  not  to  the  English, 
philosopher.  Thiers  was  entirely  persuaded  of  the  truth 
of  this  fiction.  He  was  at  this  time  devoted  to  astronomy, 
and  he  took  up  this  theory  with  the  greatest  animation.' 

On  one  other  occasion  Stanley  saw  Thiers.  It  was  after 
the  Commune,  and  the  place  was  the  Theatre  at  Ver- 
sailles, where  the  Assembly  then  sat.  The  question  before 
the  House  was  the  return  of  the  Orleans  Princes. 

'  It  was  a  striking  scene,  because  I  could  not  help  re- 
membering that  this  was  the  theatre  in  which  the  French 
Guards  held  their  banquet  on  the  eve  of  the  6th  of  October 
in  the  great  French  revolution,  when  the  ladies  of  the 
Court  appeared  in  the  boxes,  and  threw  down  white  cock- 
ades amongst  them,  which  the  Guards  put  on,  amid  the 
song  of  "  O  Richard  !    O  mon  roi !  I'univers  t'abandonne  ! " 

'  Thiers  spoke  in  favour  of  the  return  in  a  low  voice  though 
clear.  The  only  words  that  I  remember  were  these  :  —  "I 
have  always  been  in  favour  of  a  constitutional  monarchy. 
My  maxim  has  been,  '  He  who  does  not  wish  to  cross  the 
Atlantic  must  first  cross  the  British  Channel ' "  ;  "  but 
this,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "is  for  the  time  postponed."  ' 


CHAP.  XXIV 


THIERS 


363 


Stanley  was  fond  of  collecting  anecdotes  about  Thiers. 
From  the  Duchess  of  Colonna  he  heard  the  following  con- 
versation : 

"'I  believe,"  said  Thiers,  "in  God,  in  a  future  exist- 
ence, and  in  our  reunion  with  those  we  have  loved.  As 
for  the  retribution  to  the  bad  —  after  all,  nous  nc  sommcs 
pas  ni^chants —  I  leave  that  to  the  good  God.  I  know  that 
death  cannot  be  far  off.  I  will  endeavour,  to  use  a  fine 
phrase  of  Bossuet  in  speaking  of  Henrietta  Maria,  to  be 
'doux  envers  la  mort.'  "  ' 

Another  friend,  the  late  M.  Scherer,  met  Thiers  at  an 
evening  party.  He  followed  Grevy,  Sch6rer,  and  others 
to  the  door,  and  talked  as  he  sat  on  the  arm  of  a  chair. 

'  Grevy  was  complaining,  after  his  manner,  of  the  ways 
of  Providence.  Thiers  protested.  "Quant  au  bon  Dieu,  je 
suis  toujours  ministeriel."  ("When  it  is  a  question  of  the 
good  God,  I  am  always  on  the  side  of  the  Government.") 

'  Thiers  was  always  opposed  to  civil  interments.  "  When 
I  am  taken  to  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette  I  desire  to  have  a 
quantity  of  Holy  Water,  a  great  quantity  of  Holy  Water. 
I  am  of  the  religion  of  Henri  Quatre."  When  Pressens6 
went  to  him  with  a  deputation  of  Protestant  ministers,  and 
spoke  incidentally  of  the  greatness  of  Calvin,  he  said,  "Ah, 
no !  Calvin  may  have  been  a  distinguished  scholar,  but 
your  really  great  man  was  Henri  Quatre.  To  become  a 
Catholic  and  remain  a  Protestant  —  that  is  the  real  thing 
for  mankind." ' 

After  leaving  Paris,  Stanley  travelled  through  Auvergne 
by  Bourges  to  Vienne,  Orange,  and  Avignon.  Thence  he 
made  his  way  by  Montpellier  and  Carcassonne  to  the  Pyre- 
nees, and  thence  to  Biarritz.  The  journey  was  full  of 
reminiscences  of  former  tours,  but  everywhere  he  found 
some  new  object  of  interest  which  he  had  missed  before. 
At  Clermont  he  read  everything  that  he  could  find  which 
bore  on  the  site  of  the  battle  of  Gergovia. 

'  From  a  reading-room  in  the  town  I  borrowed  "  Caesar's 
Commentaries,"  the  works  of  Sidonius  Apollinaris,  first 


364  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1867 


Bishop  of  Auvergne,  and  five  pamphlets  on  the  site  of 
Gergovia ;  for  it  was  this  ancient  fortress  of  the  Gauls, 
which  alone  held  out  against  Caesar,  that  we  sought. 

'  It  is  a  vast  oblong  plateau,  running  out  from  amongst 
the  volcanoes  into  the  level  plain,  with  sides  and  front  pre- 
cipitous, in  part  broken  into  terraces,  on  which  the  various 
Gaulish  tribes  were  arrayed  round  their  chief,  Vercinget- 
orix,  who  was  termed  by  our  prosaic  driver,  Verge  kis- 
torique,  and  by  a  poetic  little  shepherd-boy  on  the  heights 
guarding  his  single  goat,  St.  Victorix.  With  the  help  of 
these  two  guides,  of  Cassar,  and  of  the  five  French  anti- 
quaries, we  contrived  to  identify  the  scene  of  the  siege,  the 
false  attack,  the  real  attack,  and  the  walls  of  the  ancient 
city.  The  little  shepherd  did  what  he  could  to  illustrate 
Caesar  by  pointing  out  to  us  a  mediaeval  tower  in  which 
the  Romans  had  fired  pistols  up  the  chimney,  and  a  breach 
in  the  wall  by  which  a  woman  had  indicated  an  entrance 
by  showing  them  a  pig  eating  corn  on  the  steps.  The 
commanding  position,  the  immense  horizon,  make  this  as 
fine  a  stage  for  the  glory  of  St.  Victorix  as  Clermont  is 
for  Pope  Urban  and  The  Hermit.' 

At  Avignon  Stanley  and  his  wife  went  to  call  on  John 
Stuart  Mill, 

*  first  going  to  the  cemetery,  to  see  his  wife's  tomb.  It 
was  beautifully  kept  in  order,  with  a  very  remarkable  epi- 
taph upon  her  by  himself,  which  ends  thus :  "  Were  there 
but  a  few  hearts  and  intellects  like  hers  this  Earth  would 
already  become  the  hoped-for  Heaven."  We  found  him 
alone,  reading.  We  had  a  long  conversation.  I  might 
have  met  him  many  times  in  London  and  never  have  had 
such  an  opportunity  ;  it  was  extremely  interesting  in  every 
way,  and  not  the  least  so  from  the  locality.' 

In  the  middle  of  November  1867  Stanley  returned  to 
London.  There  he  remained  till  the  following  August. 
Meanwhile  the  position  of  the  Irish  Church  had  become 
a  burning  question.  Determined  to  study  the  state  of 
affairs  on  the  spot,  he  spent  the  first  portion  of  his  holi- 
day in  Ireland.    '  Rarely,'  he  writes, 


CHAP.  XXIV 


TOUR  IN  IRELAND 


365 


'  have  I  enjoyed  a  tour  more.  The  novelty,  the  interest  of 
the  peculiar  juncture,  the  exceeding  entertainment  afforded, 
the  unbounded  kindness  of  the  people,  the  extraordinary 
beauty  and  charm  of  peculiar  places  —  Cashel,  Killarney, 
Valentia,  Connemara,  Clonmacnoise,  Donegal,  Derry,  the 
Antrim  coast,  the  Boyne  —  have  all  made  it  a  vision  indeed 
of  a  Green  Island.  I  seem  to  have  formed  a  hundred  new- 
friendships  and  created  a  hundred  new  interests.  And  in 
the  distant  past,  St.  Patrick  and  St.  Columba,  the  Ormondes 
and  the  Geraldines,  have  started  into  new  life.  And  oh ! 
what  a  spot  is  Derry,  and  how  enchanting  are  those  ro- 
mantic groups  of  ruined  churches,  and  carved  crosses,  and 
round  towers,  seen  here,  and  nowhere  else !  The  common 
people  are  very  delightful  —  so  peaceful,  so  obliging,  so 
very  amusing. 

'The  Irish  Church  Question  is  not  much  discussed,  but 
it  gives  much  zest  to  all  that  I  see  and  hear ;  and  when  I 
read  the  election  speeches  in  the  newspapers  I  think,  with 
a  sigh,  how  very  little  the  speakers  know  of  the  country, 
or  of  the  state  of  things  of  which  they  talk — -either  for  or 
against.' 

From  Ireland  he  was  recalled  by  the  news  of  the  death 
of  Dean  Milman.  On  September  28th,  1868,  he  writes  to 
Louisa  Stanley,  telling  her  that  he  intends  to  return  for 
the  funeral  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.    '  You  know,'  he  says, 

'how  I  loved  the  dear  old  Dean,  and  how  much  I  valued 
his  long,  unvarying  kindness.  It  has  been  a  great  pleasure 
to  me  that  I  saw  him  so  lately ;  as  always,  with  the  sense 
that  it  might  be  for  the  last  time  ;  as  always,  with  the  hope 
that  the  extraordinary  vitality  which  he  showed  might  still 
battle  with  the  advance  of  age,  and  keep  him  yet  awhile 
amongst  us.  Bitterly,  deeply  as  I  mourn  for  his  loss, 
publicly  and  privately,  I  cannot  but  feel  that  so  to  depart, 
with  his  eye  not  dimmed  nor  his  natural  force  abated,  was 
a  blessing  such  as  one  always  in  prospect  and  retrospect 
rejoices  to  think  of  for  those  we  love. 

'  How  very  far  back  that  closed  chapter  takes  us  !  What 
a  host  of  famous  memories !  What  a  defence  and  bulwark 
of  all  that  was  just  and  right!  Dear,  sacred  old  sage  of 
other  days  —  sacred  with  our  own  dearest  recollections  — 
there  is  no  like  of  him  left.' 


366 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


After  the  funeral  he  and  his  wife  left  England  for 
Germany.  Passing  through  Paris  in  the  first  week  of 
October  1868,  they  found  French  society  absorbed  in  the 
Spanish  question.  M.  Prevost-Paradol,  whom  they  met  at 
Madame  Mohl's  house,  described  the  scene  that  he  had 
witnessed  on  September  30th,  at  the  station  at  Biarritz, 
when  Queen  Isabella  arrived  there  in  flight  from  Spain  :^ 

'  Presently  a  train  going  towards  Madrid,  which  had 
been  shunted  to  allow  of  the  Royal  train  coming  in,  passed. 
It  was  full  of  Spanish  refugees  returning.  They  all  put 
their  heads  out  of  the  windows  and  hooted  at  the  Queen. 
Isabella  looked  at  them  fiercely  and  sadly,  but  with  con- 
summate dignity  —  and  so  parted  from  her  subjects.  What 
a  scene ! ' 

At  Meaux  they  halted  to  see  the  cathedral  of  Bossuet. 
The  grave  of  the  '  Eagle  of  Meaux '  had  been  recently 
opened,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  exact  spot  in  which  he 
was  buried.  The  skeleton  still  remained  perfect,  and 
Stanley,  to  his  great  delight,  was  told  that  the  great  French 
preacher  was  no  taller  than  himself.  Baden-Baden  was 
the  destination  of  the  travellers,  and  they  arrived  there  at 
a  moment  when  the  Prussian  Royal  Family  had  assembled 
for  the  birthday  of  the  Crown  Prince. Stanley  and  his 
wife  dined  with  the  Royal  party,  '  certainly  a  most  intelligent 
and  encouraging  group  in  these  days  of  depressed  Royalty.' 

'  The  Queen  of  Prussia  was  not  quite  so  full  of  ques- 
tioning as  before,  but  with  more  conversation  of  her  own 
that  was  very  curious.  The  King  is  a  tall,  soldierlike  old 
man,  speaking  only  French  and  German.  The  Crown 
Prince  looks  quite  worthy  of  the  future  before  him  —  so 
natural,  so  eager,  such  an  open,  handsome  countenance. 
The  Crown  Princess,  as  full  of  genius  and  of  power  as  when 
I  saw  her  three  years  ago.    "  Ah  ! "  she  said,  "  how  much 

^1  Disgusted  at  the  corrupt  administration  of  the  Government,  a  pronuncia- 
nteuto  by  Prim  and  Topete  was  accepted  by  the  country  at  Cadiz.  Queen  Isa- 
bella fled  to  France,  and  there  resigned  in  favour  of  her  son,  Alphonso  XII. 

^  The  late  Emperor  Frederick. 


CHAP.  XXIV       DEBATES  ON  IRISH  CHURCH 


367 


has  passed  in  those  three  years !  "  Her  eyes  filled  with 
tears  at  the  thought  of  her  lost  child. 

'  On  the  Crown  Prince's  birthday  we  went  to  the  Neue 
Schloss  to  pay  our  respects.  Amongst  his  presents  was 
a  picture  of  the  meeting  between  him  and  his  father  after 
the  battle  of  Sadowa,  painted  by  an  artist  who  had  been 
there.  He  showed  it  to  us  himself,  and  pointed  out  the 
different  generals,  "  each  exactly  in  the  position  in  which 
they  were  at  the  moment."  Moltke,  the  chief  adviser  of 
the  whole  campaign  and  battle,  is  a  very  retiring,  modest, 
pale,  slender  man,  of  very  few  words.' 

Already  war  was  in  the  air.  '  There  is,'  says  Stanley, 
'  a  good  deal  of  uneasiness  about  war  with  France,  which 
preoccupies  everyone.'  'The  conversation,'  he  adds  in 
another  letter, 

'  runs  on  the  situation  of  Prussia  in  Germany.  It  is  curious 
to  read  the  speeches  in  England  describing  "all  Europe  as 
watching  the  decision  of  the  Irish  Church  Question,"  and 
then  to  find  that  in  France  and  Germany  it  is  the  last  thing 
thought  of,  the  Spanish  Revolution  in  the  one,  the  Prussian 
ascendency  in  the  other,  occupying  all  men's  minds.' 

Throughout  the  first  six  months  of  1869  Stanley  fol- 
lowed, with  mingled  anxiety  and  disappointment,  the  prog- 
ress of  the  debates  in  Parliament  on  the  Irish  Church. 
The  Upper  House  declared  itself  in  favour  of  his  favourite 
scheme  of  concurrent  endowment,  and  on  other  points  in 
the  Bill  it  strongly  opposed  the  measure  passed  by  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  July  1869  a  compromise  was 
effected  which  secured  the  passing  of  the  Irish  Church 
Act,  and  Stanley  turned,  with  undivided  interest,  to  watch 
the  progress  of  the  crisis  in  the  Church  of  Rome.  For 
the  last  ten  years  the  centralising  movement  had  gathered 
strength  among  Roman  Catholics.  The  tide,  which  was 
setting  irresi.stibly  in  favour  of  Ultramontanism,  reached 
its  height  when  Pope  Pius  IX.  formally  summoned  tlie 


The  residence  of  the  Grand  Duke  and  Grand  Duchess  of  Baden. 


368 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1869 


Bishops  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  to  meet  in  a 
Council  to  be  held  at  Rome  on  December  8th,  1869. 
Stanley  determined  to  make  Rome  the  goal  of  his  autumn 
expedition.  If  his  duties  at  Westminster  prevented  his 
presence  at  the  opening  of  the  Council,  he  hoped  that 
he  might  at  least  witness  the  gathering  of  the  Bishops. 
With  this  object,  after  a  short  tour  in  Northumberland, 
along  the  Roman  Wall,  he  left  England  in  October  1869. 

The  Council  was  a  picturesque  and  striking  event, 
which  strongly  appealed  to  his  historical  imagination. 
But  all  his  sympathies  were  enlisted  on  the  side  of  those 
who  resisted  the  Ultramontane  movement,  of  which  it  was 
the  outcome.  He  would  have  been  inconsistent  with  him- 
self if  he  had  not  agreed  with  Dollinger  and  Friedrich, 
with  Montalembert  and  Albert  de  Broglie,  with  Newman 
and  Lord  Acton,  with  the  '  Correspondant '  and  the  '  Home 
and  Foreign  Review,'  rather  than  with  Veuillot  and  the 
'  Univers,'  or  with  Manning,  Ward,  and  the  '  Dublin  Re- 
view.' In  two  articles  which  he  contributed  to  the  'Edin- 
burgh Review'  in  1869^*  and  1871^^  he  discusses  the 
difficulties  that  confronted  the  Council  and  the  results 
that  it  had  effected.  Both  articles  are  full  of  the  princi- 
ples which  he  was  never  weary  of  enforcing.  He  dwells 
upon  the  exclusion  of  the  lay  element  from  the  Council  as 
a  deviation  from  precedent  which  was  fatal  to  its  claim  to 
be  CEcumenical.  'Such  a  change,'  he  says,  'amounts  to 
a  revolution.'    And  the  change  was,  in  his  opinion, 

'not  ennobling,  but  degrading,  to  the  cause  of  the  Church 
and  of  the  religion  which  it  professes  to  serve.  It  is  the 
result  of  that  double  tendency  by  which,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  higher  powers  and  intelligences,  to  which  Providence 
has  committed  the  guidance  of  human  affairs,  are  tempted 
to  hold  aloof  from  the  course  of  religious  development,  and 
so  to  hand  it  over,  unchecked,  and  without  control  or 

"  October  1869.  1^  July  1 87 1. 


CHAP.  XXIV        THE  (ECUMENICAL  COUNCIL 


369 


Stimulus,  to  the  ecclesiastical,  monastic,  or  puritanical  bias, 
which,  on  the  other  hand,  is  always  striving  to  assert  its 
exclusive  sway.' 

The  two  heroes  of  the  Council  were,  in  his  opinion, 
Dr.  Dollinger  and  Pere  Hyacinthe.  They  were  left  in  a 
position  which  seemed  to  him,  perhaps  from  his  own 
experience,  difficult,  but  not  untenable. 

'  They  are  not  more  at  variance  with  the  usages  or 
decrees  of  Pope  or  Council  than  many  a  devout  Catholic 
was  in  the  Middle  Ages,  or  in  Austria  under  the  rule  of 
Joseph  II.,  or  in  France  under  the  influence  of  Gallicanism. 
To  maintain  the  rights  and  discharge  the  duties  of  a 
Reformer  within  a  national  or  ancient  Church  is  a  far 
more  arduous  task  than  to  found  a  Puritan  or  a  Free- 
thinking  sect  ;  but  it  is,  partly  on  that  very  account,  far 
more  fruitful,  far  more  Christian.' 

When  Stanley  reached  Paris,  on  his  way  to  Rome,  in 
October  1869,  Pere  Hyacinthe,  the  Superior  of  the  Car- 
melite Convent  at  Passy,  and  the  preacher  of  the  eloquent 
Advent  sermons  at  Notre  Dame,  had  already  published 
his  protest  against  the  'doctrines  and  practices  which  are 
called  Roman,  but  are  not  Christian.'  On  the  day  on  which 
he  had  been  ordered  to  return  to  his  convent  he  left  France, 
and  at  the  time  of  Stanley's  arrival  in  Paris  he  was  under 
sentence  of  excommunication,  and  on  his  way  to  America. 
Not  to  see  Pere  Hyacinthe  was  a  deep  disappointment  to 
Stanley.  But,  by  a  long  journey,  he  succeeded  in  seeing 
Dr.  Dollinger  at  Munich.  '  By  a  forced  march,'  he  writes 
on  October  9th,  1869, 

'  we  reached  Munich.  I  telegraphed  to  Dollinger  to  say 
that  I  was  coming,  and  this  morning  he  came  to  see  me 
before  I  was  up,  being  in  bed  with  a  sick-headache.  He 
stayed  some  time,  and  at  5.30  p.m.  I  was  well  enough  to 
go  to  dine  with  him  at  11  Friihlingstrasse.  It  was  most 
interesting  to  hear  his  expectations  of  the  Council.  I 

1*"  September  20th,  1869. 
VOL.  II  BB 


370 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1869 


never  could  have  got  so  much  out  of  him  in-  any  other 
way.' 

TravelUng  from  Munich  by  Innspruck  and  the  Brenner 
to  Rome,  Stanley  found  that  the  preparations  for  the 
Council  had  hardly  begun.  An  expedition  to  Naples 
occupied  a  week,  and  he  then  returned  to  Rome,  '  calcu- 
lating,' as  he  tells  his  sister, 

'  on  a  delightful  three  weeks,  when  lo !  a  summons  from 
the  Archbishop  quite  unexpectedly  arrived,  demanding 
my  presence  in  England  for  a  meeting  of  the  Ritual  Com- 
mission. Most  reluctantly  we  felt  obliged  to  come  back. 
We  had  six  most  interesting  days  in  Rome,  seeing  the 
first  arrivals  of  the  Bishops.' 

'  I  was  deeply  vexed,'  he  writes  to  Henry  de  Bunsen, 
'  to  leave  Rome  before  the  Council  began.  But  still  I  feel 
that  I  know  enough  to  be  able  to  follow  the  accounts  with 
deep  interest.' 

During  his  absence  in  Italy  two  appointments  were 
made  in  which  he  was  keenly  interested — that  of  Dr. 
Temple  to  the  Bishopric  of  Exeter,  and  that  of  Dr.  Bright 
to  the  Chair  of  Ecclesiastical  History  at  Oxford  vacated 
by  the  death  of  Professor  Shirley.  The  appointment  of 
Dr.  Temple  was  officially  announced  early  in  October 
1869.  '  I  am  quite  astounded,'  he  writes  to  his  sister  from 
Rome, 

'  at  the  opposition  to  Temple.  I  consider  it  so  far  the  best 
appointment,  and  so  inevitable,  if  Gladstone  was  to  make 
any  Liberal  bishops,  that  I  cannot  conceive  anyone  being 
surprised.' 

The  appointment  was  peculiarly  pleasing  to  Stanley,  on 
personal  as  well  as  other  grounds.  He  always  watched 
the  career  of  his  friends  with  the  warmest  interest.  '  You 
know,'  he  wrote  to  Professor  Jowett,  when  congratulating 
him  on  his  election  to  the  Mastership  of  Balliol  College  in 


CHAF.  XXIV     THE  NEW  BISHOP  OF  EXETER  37 1 


1870,  'that  I  live  and  feed  on  the  public  advancement  of 
my  friends  '  ;  and  it  was  in  the  same  spirit  that  he  rejoiced 
in  the  elevation  of  Dr.  Temple.  At  the  same  time,  the 
appointment  relieved  him  from  the  fear  of  being  himself 
offered  a  bishopric.  '  If  Oxford,'  he  writes  to  Professor 
Jowett, 

'  had  been  offered,  I  should  certainly  have  taken  it.  But 
that  having  passed  away,  I  do  not  think  myself  bound,  at 
least  for  the  present,  to  accept  any  ordinary  see.' 

'  My  dear  mother,'  he  adds,  in  another  letter  to  the  same 
friend, 

'rejoiced  after  my  article  on  "Essays  and  Reviews"  that 
it  would  make  my  removal  to  a  bishopric  impossible.  I 
rejoiced,  in  like  manner,  after  the  affair  of  the  Irish  Church. 
I  do  not  know  which  of  the  two  most  assisted.  I  almost 
think  the  latter.' 

Dr.  Temple  was  consecrated  at  Westminster  Abbey  on 
St.  Thomas's  Day  (December  21st),  1869.  The  opposition 
to  the  appointment,  though  not  formidable  in  point  of 
extent,  had  been  very  determined.    '  Pusey,'  writes  Stanley, 

'has  gone  so  far  as  to  assert  that  the  choice  was  the  most 
frightful  enormity  that  has  ever  been  perpetrated  by  a 
Prime  Minister.' 

Every  stage  of  the  appointment  had  been  contested. 
The  crisis  was  darkened  by  the  sudden  and  alarming  ill- 
ness of  Archbishop  Tait.  The  Bishops,  for  the  most  part, 
shrank  from  joining  in  the  consecration.  Even  when  the 
Bishop  of  London  (Jackson),  the  Bishop  of  Ely  (Harold 
Browne),  and  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  (Thirlwall),  had 
consented  to  take  part  in  the  ceremony,  it  was  feared  that 
the  service  in  Westminster  Abbey  might  be  interrupted,  and 
Stanley  had  made  special  preparations  for  the  forcible  ejec- 
tion of  anyone  who  disturbed  the  proceedings.    When  the 


K  I!  2 


372 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1869 


three  Bishops  met  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  before  the 
ceremony,  Dr.  Temple  and  Stanley  being  present, 

*  eight  or  ten  protests  were  handed  in  to  the  Bishop  of 
London.  He,  with  a  firmness  and  common-sense  that  did 
him  great  honour,  considering  the  little  sympathy  that  he 
entertained  for  Dr.  Temple's  theological  views,  resisted 
them  all,  on  the  ground  of  their  utter  contrariety  to  the 
law  of  the  land.  It  was  a  long  delay,  and  the  congregation 
in  the  Abbey,  crowded  to  excess,  was  wondering  what 
could  be  the  cause.  When  we  entered,  the  darkness  was 
something  beyond  all  precedent.  It  was  difficult,  even 
with  all  the  lights  in  the  Abbey,  to  discern  one  person  from 
another ;  and  so,  in  the  language  of  a  High  Church  news- 
paper, "on  that  darkest  day  in  the  whole  year  was  perpe- 
trated the  darkest  crime  which  had  been  perpetrated  in  the 
English  Church."  ' 

The  other  appointment  which  had  taken  place  during  his 
absence  from  England  was  that  of  the  Rev.  W.  Bright  to 
the  Professorship  of  Ecclesiastical  History  which  Stanley 
himself  had  formerly  held  at  Oxford.  He  wrote  to  the 
newly-appointed  Professor  a  warm  letter  of  congratulation. 
'  Your  letter,'  replies  Dr.  Bright  on  November  14th,  1869, 

*  was  delivered  to  me  while  I  was  giving  a  college  lecture. 
If  I  had  opened  and  read  it  at  once,  I  doubt  whether  I 
should  have  been  able  to  go  on. 

'There  are  some  occasions  on  which  words  of  thanks 
seem  really  too  weak  and  inexpressive.  This,  to  me,  is 
one  of  them. 

'That  my  "High  Church"  friends  should  warmly  con- 
gratulate me  was  pleasant  enough,  but  natural  enough.  I 
have  been,  in  one  way,  more  deeply  touched  by  the  kind- 
ness of  several  Liberals  here,  who,  while  they  must  have 
desired  a  different  appointment,  have  felt  able  to  give  me 
a  cordial  expression  of  their  good-will.  If  this  kindness, 
shown  by  persons  with  whom  I  had  no  special  associations 
reaching  far  back  into  the  past,  gave  me  vivid  and  unex- 
pected pleasure,  what  must  it  be  to  me  to  possess  such  a 
letter  as  this  of  yours  Believe  me  that  I  feel  much  more 
than  I  can  write  in  the  way  of  gratitude  for  such  a  greeting. 

'  I  received  a  most  kind  letter  from  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 


CHAP.  XXIV        LETTER  FROM  DR.  BRIGHT 


373 


don,  which  I  thought  I  could  best  acknowledge  by  saying 
to  him,  as  I  would  now  say  to  you,  that,  by  God's  help,  I 
would  never  forget  to  promote,  as  far  as  I  can,  in  those  who 
may  read  this  great  subject  with  me  a  spirit  of  charity  and 
justice.  I  will  never  encourage  —  I  will  always  discourage 
the  temper  of  hard  and  unfair  partisanship  which  would 
sacrifice  truthfulness  to  the  supposed  interests  of  a  cause. 
These  are  lessons  which  I  learned  from  Arnold  at  Rugby, 
and  from  you  at  O.xford,  which  I  shall  hope  and  strive  to 
remember  as  earnestly  as  any  "  Broad  Churchman  "  could  ; 
and  which,  perhaps,  have  a  special  value  and  significance 
for  a  person  occupying  a  different  standpoint,  because  they 
manifestly  transcend  all  diversities  of  ecclesiastical  or 
theological  opinion  between  those  who  worship  Him  Who 
is  Truth  and  Love. 

'  I  never  can  forget  what  I  owe  to  you,  let  such  diversi- 
ties be  what  they  will.  And  I  shall,  if  possible,  have  a  yet 
livelier  and  more  continuous  recollection  of  it  when  I  re- 
move (as  I  suppose  I  shall  do  next  spring)  to  the  house 
that  once  was  yours.' 

Another  letter  that  Stanley  received  four  years  before, 
from  a  leader  whose  theological  views  were  opposed  to  his 
own  and  to  those  of  Dr.  Bright,  may  be  quoted  here.  It 
gives  a  further  proof  of  the  kindly  feeling  with  which  he 
was  regarded  by  men  who  were  most  strongly  opposed  to 
him  in  their  opinions.  The  Rev.  A.  W.  Thorold  (after- 
wards Bishop  of  Rochester,  and  now  Bishop  of  Winchester) 
wrote  to  him  in  December  1864,  fresh  from  a  re-reading  of 
'  Arnold's  Life.'    '  I  had  not  read  it,'  he  says, 

'for  twenty  years;  in  fact,  not  since  the  College  days, 
when  hardly  an  afternoon  passed  without  my  seeing  you, 
and  my  earnest  wishing  to  know  you,  and  my  envying  the 
undergraduates  who  joined  you  in  your  walks,  and  whom 
you  treated  as  if  you  felt  them  friends. 

'Mr.  Dean,  I  am  but  a  simple  parish  priest,  while  you 
are  the  Queen's  friend,  and  the  one  man  who,  more  than 
any  other  in  these  times,  is  influencing  the  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  rising  generation  ;  and  therefore  I  am  almost 
afraid  of  taking  a  liberty  with  you  in  what  a  full  heart 
presses  me  to  pour  out. 


374 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


'  But  I  do  not  want  you  to  think  because  in  some  things 
(and  those  of  such  great  moment  that  depth  of  convic- 
tion, and  liberty,  and  courage  are  indispensable  when  we 
come  across  them)  I,  and  others  with  whom  I  am  in  the 
habit  of  acting,  take  opposite  ground  to  you,  and  do 
and  teach  as  conscience  bids  us,  that  therefore  we  are 
incapable  of  appreciating  your  motives,  or  respecting,  and 
even  esteeming  you  for  those  gifts  and  qualities  which 
make  men  truly  great. 

'You  have  taught  me  —  I  cannot  say  how  much.  You 
are  to  me,  in  some  respects,  a  kind  of  beacon-light ;  for 
courage  in  upholding  unpopular  opinions,  and  unaffected 
kindness  towards  those  who  so  markedly  differ  from  you, 
are  qualities  which  I  can  admire,  though  I  may  not  feel  to 
possess  them  ;  and  I  want  you  to  be  sure  that,  among 
those  who  seem  to  stand  opposite  to  you,  there  are  not 
a  few  who  in  their  hearts  regard  you  with  a  feeling  which 
only  needs  occasion  and  opportunity  to  become  a  true 
affection,  and  who,  while  they  cannot  always  go  with  you, 
or  follow  you,  can  bless  you,  and  ask  for  you  that  in  all 
things  you  may  know  God's  will,  and  at  all  times  be  ready 
to  fulfil  it.  This  is  a  sick  man's  letter,  as  you  will  readily 
gather  from  its  length  and  the  clumsy  way  in  which  it  is 
worded.' 

The  one  cloud  which,  to  Stanley's  eye,  at  this  period 
darkened  the  ecclesiastical  horizon  was  the  prosecution  of 
the  Rev.  C.  Voysey  for  heresy. 

Stanley  had  from  time  to  time  corresponded  with  Mr. 
Voysey  for  many  years,  and  had  been  instrumental  in 
procuring  him  a  curacy  at  Great  Yarmouth,  and  subse- 
quently in  London.  When  curate  of  St.  Mark's,  White- 
chapel,  Mr.  Voysey  was  dismissed  by  his  vicar  on  account 
of  a  sermon  which  had  given  offence  to  a  prominent  mem- 
ber of  the  congregation.  Through  the  intervention  of  Dr. 
Tait,  then  Bishop  of  London,  he  obtained  another  curacy 
in  London,  at  St.  Mark's,  Victoria  Docks.  Thence,  in 
1863,  he  went  as  curate  to  Healaugh,  near  Tadcaster,  and 
in  the  following  year  was  made  vicar  of  the  parish. 


CHAP.  XXIV    CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  MR.  VOYSEY  375 


Mr.  Voysey's  sermons  as  curate  and  as  vicar  called 
down  the  criticism  of  the  Archbishop  of  York,  in  whose 
diocese  the  rural  parish  of  Healaugh  was  situated.  In 
1864  Mr.  Voysey  sent  extracts  from  the  incriminated 
sermons  to  Stanley,  asking  his  advice.  In  reply  Stanley 
writes  a  long  letter,  from  which  the  following  passage  is 
extracted 

'  Might  I  venture,  before  offering  any  advice  as  to  your 
proceedings  with  the  Archbishop,  to  urge  you  to  reconsider 
the  advisableness  of  the  position  which,  in  these  extracts, 
you  have  taken  up 

'  If,  as  I  presume,  your  population  is  rural,  I  cannot 
imagine  any  course  more  inappropriate  (and  of  sermons, 
the  first,  second,  and  third  excellence  seems  to  be  that 
they  should  be  appropriate)  to  those  to  whom  they  are 
addressed. 

'  I  do  not  mean  that  these  difficulties  should  be  explained 
away  or  denied.  But  to  insist  upon  them  as  a  necessary 
preliminary  to  the  instruction  to  be  derived  from  these  or 
any  other  parts  of  Scripture  appears  to  me,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, the  least  likely  to  promote  the  end  you  have 
in  view  of  any  course  that  you  could  adopt.  To  state  the 
whole  case  is  impossible,  because  it  would  be  simply 
unintelligible. 

'  Preach  on  the  true  doctrines  of  the  Bible,  and  the  errors 
and  weaknesses  of  the  human  writers  will  soon  cease  to 
have  any  hold  on  the  minds  of  all  but  a  few  inquiring 
people,  who  can  be  dealt  with  in  their  own  way.  But  to 
introduce  discussions  on  the  Semitic  phraseology,  as  a 
neces.sary  part  of  Christian  edification,  for  a  Broad  Church- 
man seems  to  me  as  absurd  as  for  a  High  Churchman  to 
introduce,  as  essential,  discussions  on  the  Nag's  Head  Con- 
vention or  the  canons  of  Nicaea. 

'  If  I  were  the  Archbishop,  I  should  lament  your  course 
of  proceedings,  not  as  wrong  in  itself,  nor  as  unlawful  for 
you  to  maintain,  but  as  exceedingly  unsuitable  to  the 
circumstances  in  which  you  are  placed.' 

'It  is  enough  for  me,'  he  writes  in  a  second  letter, 
replying  to  an  explanation  from  Mr.  Voysey,  '  that  you  will 


376 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1866 


do  what  you  can  to  drive  out  error  by  stating  the  truth,  and 
not  to  secure  the  truth  by  always  attacking  error.'  A  few 
months  later  Mr.  Voysey  consulted  him  about  a  sermon 
which  he  proposed  to  publish.  Stanley  replies  on  March 
1 2th,  1866: 

'  Your  sermon  I  have  read.  It  is  quite  clear  from 
counsel's  opinion  that  you  would  run  the  greatest  risk  in 
publishing  it,  and  inflict  a  very  severe  injury  on  the  Church. 
Right  or  wrong,  that  opinion  represents  the  view  which 
lawyers,  even  on  the  Liberal  side,  are  likely  to  take  of  the 
matter.  I  have  always  thought  that  the  decision  of  the 
Judicial  Committee  in  the  case  of  "Essays  and  Reviews," 
though  most  just  in  itself,  legally  as  well  as  morally,  was, 
nevertheless,  a  mercy  beyond  all  expectation  —  so  greatly 
are  men's  minds  biassed  by  what  they  imagine  to  be 
expected  of  them.  And  even  that  decision  went  barely  on 
the  letter  of  the  law.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  extraordinary 
good  fortune  that  the  points  selected  were  (with  the  excep- 
tion of  Justification)  points  on  which  the  Articles  were  un- 
mistakably and  impressively  silent,  I  doubt  whether  we 
should  have  gained  the  victory.  In  the  case  of  the  so-called 
miraculous  "Conception,"  any  change  of  meaning  in  the  old 
terms  is  as  yet  so  new  that  I  should  apprehend  the  utmost 
danger  of  a  premature  foreclosing  of  the  question,  if  it  were 
to  come  before  a  court,  unless  under  the  most  favourable 
circumstances. 

'  With  regard  to  the  sermon  itself,  as  to  the  general 
position  that  the  proof  and  assurance  of  the  Incarnation 
consist,  not  in  the  physical  or  potential  parts  of  the  narra- 
tive, but  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  parts,  I  entirely  concur ; 
and  so,  I  conceive,  would  most  people,  unless  they  were  on 
the  watch  for  some  argument  in  the  controversy  about 
miracles.  And  it  is  this  last  consideration  which  makes 
me  deprecate  any  statement  of  the  case  in  so  controversial 
a  way  as  you  have  done,  still  more  any  precipitation  of  a 
legal  decision  on  a  matter  which  will  probably  settle  itself 
by  silence  or  a  general  consent.' 

Throughout  the  years  1867-69  the  correspondence 
continues.  Now  Stanley  deprecates  '  the  somewhat  defiant 
tone  which  I  find  in  almost  all  that  you  write.'    Now  he 


CHAP.  XXIV    CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  MR.  VOYSEY  37/ 


refuses  to  allow  that  the  moral  excellence  and  beauty  of 
Christ's  teaching,  or  even  His  sinless  perfection,  were  the 
only  things  in  the  Gospel  which  '  give  the  superhuman  idea 
of  the  Saviour's  character.  The  whole  of  what  Hegel  calls 
the  "  Schicksallosigkeit  "  —  the  concatenation  of  events, 
&c.,  &c.,  go  to  make  up  the  complex  image  of  the  unique 
phenomenon,  quite  as  much  as  the  moral  excellence.' 
Now  he  rebukes  his  correspondent  for  calling  the  story  of 
Balaam  and  his  ass  '  ridiculous.'  Now,  again,  he  urges 
that  '  the  main  object  of  having  any  part  of  the  Bible  read 
in  Church  is,  not  to  draw  out  all  the  objections  that  can  be 
urged  against  it,  but  all  the  lessons  that  can  be  derived 
from  it.'  Now,  finally,  he  combats  Mr.  Voysey's  view  of 
the  Atonement.    '  The  death  of  Christ,'  he  says, 

'  though  described  in  figures  drawn  from  the  Mosaic  law,  is 
never  spoken  of  as  having  for  its  object  the  appeasing  of 
God's  anger,  or  as  the  substitution  for  the  sins  of  man,  but 
as  having  for  its  main  purpose  the  moral  purification  of 
the  heart  and  conscience.  And  the  sacrifice  of  Christ 
Himself  is  described  as  being  one  of  the  heart,  and  will, 
and  spirit.' 

Throughout  the  lengthy  correspondence  Stanley  takes  his 
stand  less  on  reason  than  on  the  Bible.  Read,  he  in  effect 
says,  the  Bible  in  the  light  derived  from  it,  and  in  the 
spirit  which  its  words  engender,  and  the  idea  of  God, 
which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  every  human  soul,  finds  in 
its  words  a  more  complete  realisation  of  a  man's  deep- 
est cravings  than  he  can  anywhere  else  discover  —  in 
any  dreams  of  his  own  imagination,  or  in  any  theories 
stated  by  others.  Above  all  will  this  complete  realisa- 
tion be  found  in  the  life,  character,  works,  and  teaching  of 
Christ. 

All  his  remonstrances  against  the  tone  of  Mr.  Voysey's 
sermons  were,  however,  unavailing.    Mr.  Voysey  was  deter- 


3/8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1868 


mined  to  challenge  a  legal  decision  upon  the  validity  of 
his  opinions.  It  was  in  vain  that  Stanley  protested.  '  I 
am  convinced,'  he  writes  in  1868, 

'  that  if  the  question  were  really  to  come  before  the  courts 
of  law  there  would  be  such  an  amount  of  public  indigna- 
tion brought  to  bear  against  you  for  preaching,  for  example, 
such  a  sermon  as  that  on  the  Raising  of  Lazarus  in  a 
country  parish,  that  it  would  be  thought  (irrespective  of 
the  question  of  doctrine)  such  a  breach  of  good  feeling, 
charity,  and  common-sense  that  the  mind,  even  of  the  great 
functionaries  in  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil, would  be  hopelessly  prejudiced  against  you  before  the 
trial  began.  I  use  these  strong  words  advisedly,  though 
with  great  pain,  because  I  have  never  wavered  in  my  respect 
for  the  temper  and  patience  with  which  you  have  received 
my  remonstrances,  and  because  I  not  only  believe  you  to 
be  yourself  animated  by  good  motives,  but  think  that  the 
pale  of  the  Church  of  England  should  be  kept  wide  enough 
to  embrace  both  you  and  the  extreme  Ritualists.  But  just 
as  I  have  always  in  their  case  deprecated  the  needless 
aggravation  of  the  controversy  by  the  mode  in  which  they 
have  run  counter  to  the  feeling  of  the  country,  and,  in  some 
instances,  to  their  own  congregations,  so  also  I  deprecate 
even  more  strongly,  in  proportion  to  my  deeper  respect 
for  yourself,  the  like  outrage  on  still  tenderer  and  more 
cherished  and  sacred  feelings  by  such  proceedings  as  those 
of  which  I  speak.' 

Mr.  Voysey  found  himself  unable  to  accept  Stanley's 
advice.  Legal  proceedings  were  challenged,  and  in  due 
course  taken  against  him,  in  the  Chancery  Court  of  York. 
Stanley  subscribed  to  the  fund  which  was  raised  for  his 
defence,  and  in  a  letter  published  in  the  newspapers  ^"  stated 
the  grounds  on  which  he  acted.  He  strongly  deprecated 
Mr.  Voysey's  treatment  of  Biblical  and  sacred  subjects. 
But,  at  the  same  time,  he  recognised  in  his  sermons  a  rare 
honesty  of  purpose,  as  well  as  a  humble  and  devout  faith, 
which  seemed  to  him  to  demand  the  utmost  sympathy  for 


1'  The  Times  for  August  i6th,  1869. 


CHAP.  XXIV    CORRESPONDENCE  WITH  MR.  VOYSEY  Z79 


the  frame  of  mind  that  led  to  results  in  other  respects  so 
much  to  be  lamented.    '  There  are,  however,'  he  continues, 

'other  and  more  general  reasons  why  I  am  glad  to  have 
this  opportunity  of  protesting  against  a  course  which 
appears  to  me  fraught  with  mischief  to  the  Church.  The 
questions  which  Mr.  Voysey  has  stirred  are  such  as  agitate 
the  minds  both  of  clergy  and  laity  in  an  unusual  degree  at 
the  present  time.  They  admit  of  every  conceivable  shade 
in  their  mode  of  exposition  and  solution.  Persons  of  high 
rank  in  the  Church  are  known  to  have  entertained  them, 
and  at  times  given  them  utterance,  without  drawing  upon 
themselves  legal  prosecution,  or  even  considerable  blame. 
Under  these  circumstances,  an  attempt  at  an  abrupt  sup- 
pression of  their  agitation  in  a  single  instance  appears  to 
me  deplorable.' 

He  points  out  that  the  same  questions  were  being 
agitated  in  all  the  Churches  of  Europe,  and  argues  that  it 
would  be  'a  deplorable  issue  if  restraint  were  to  be  enforced 
by  the  Church  of  England  first  among  the  historical 
Churches  in  Christendom.'  He  urges  also,  that,  in  point 
of  principle,  the  latitude  demanded  had  been  conceded  by 
recent  judgments.  '  All,  therefore,  that  could  be  effected 
by  an  adverse  decision  in  this  instance  would  be  a  limita- 
tion in  point  of  detail,  which  would  leave  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal hardship,  without  furnishing  any  guide  for  future 
action.' 

On  December  2nd,  1869,  judgment  was  given  against 
Mr.  Voysey  on  the  charge  of  heresy.  He  at  once  deter- 
mined to  appeal  to  the  Privy  Council.  Every  argument 
that  Stanley  could  bring  to  bear  upon  him  to  induce  him 
to  abandon  the  appeal  proved  useless.  The  appeal  was 
heard  in  November  1870,  and  the  judgment  of  the  Privy 
Council,  delivered  on  February  iith,  1871,  confirmed  the 
decision  of  the  Chancery  Court  of  York.^^ 

On  October  1st,  1871,  Mr.  Voysey  opened  his  own  chapel  in  St.  George's 
Hall,  Langham  Place. 


380 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


The  correspondence  between  Mr.  Voysey  and  Stanley 
was  never  entirely  interrupted  by  what  had  passed  between 
them.  Naturally,  however,  it  assumed  a  very  different 
character.    'Your  refusal,'  writes  Stanley  in  1872, 

'  in  every  instance  in  which  I  have  remonstrated  with  you 
to  be  guided  by  my  advice  has  made  me  long  relinquish 
any  attempt  to  influence  or  guide  your  course.  But  I 
have  never  doubted  the  honesty  and  sincerity  of  your 
motives.' 

One  other  letter  to  Mr.  Voysey  may  be  quoted.  It 
bears  the  date  of  November  29th,  1876,  and  it  was,  there- 
fore, written  after  the  death  of  Lady  Augusta  Stanley : 

'For  the  sermon  I  return  my  sincere  expression  of 
gratitude.  I  am  come  to  that  stage  of  existence  when 
praise  and  blame  have  but  little  effect.  Still,  it  is  pleasant 
to  know  that  there  are  those  who  understand  what  my 
imperfect  efforts  have  meant,  and  who,  when  I  am  gone, 
will  remember  for  what  objects  and  with  what  hopes  I  did 
my  best  whilst  time  and  opportunity  were  given.' 


CHAP.  XXV    DINNER  TO  ARCHBISHOP  LYCURGUS        38 1 


CHAPTER  XXV 
1870-73 

STANLEY'S  SPEECH  AT  THE  DINNER  GIVEN  TO  ARCHBISHOP 
LYCURGUS— THE  OUTBREAK  OF  THE  FRANCO-PRUSSIAN 
WAR  — STANLEY'S  LOVE  OF  SCOTLAND  AND  OF  WALTER 

scorr  — HIS  friendship  with  the  bishop  of  st. 

ANDREWS— HIS  GIFT  OF  VERSE-WRITING— HIS  VISIT  TO 
SEDAN  — THE  OLD  CATHOLIC  CONGRESS  AT  MUNICH,  1871 
—  THE  ILLNESS  OF  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES,  1871-72  — THE 
MARRIAGE  OF  PERE  HYACINTHE— THE  OLD  CATHOLIC  CON- 
GRESS AT  COLOGNE,  1872  — DEATH  OF  MERLE  D'AUBIGNE — 
LAMARTINE'S  POETRY  — MONTE  GENEROSO  — THE  QUEEN'S 
REQUEST  THAT  STANLEY  SHOULD  PERFORM  THE  PROTES- 
TANT CEREMONY  AT  ST.  PETERSBURG  ON  THE  OCCASION 
OF  THE  MARRIAGE  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  EDINBURGH. 

During  Stanley's  occupancy  of  the  Deanery  of  West- 
minster the  Jerusalem  Chamber  was  put  to  many  new 
uses.  In  it  were  held  the  meetings  of  the  Ritual  Commis- 
sion, of  the  Company  for  the  Revision  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, of  the  Palestine  Exploration  Fund.  It  was  also  the 
scene  of  a  banquet  given  by  the  Greek  merchants  of 
London,  on  January  25th,  1870,  to  welcome  Alexander 
Lycurgus,  the  Archbishop  of  Syros,  Delos,  and  other 
islands  of  the  yEgean.  In  proposing  the  health  of  the 
guest  Stanley  seized,  with  happy  instinct,  on  a  series  of 
coincidences  suggested  by  the  occasion.  Two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  before  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  had  been 
used  for  a  similar  purpose,  and  never  since.  On  that 
occasion  Dean  Williams,  by  command  of  James  I.,  enter- 
tained the  French  Ambassador  and  the  French  ecclesi- 


382 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


astics  who  came  to  negotiate  the  marriage  of  Prince 
Charles  and  Henrietta  Maria  of  France.  With  an  allusion 
to  this  precedent  Stanley  concludes  his  speech : 

'  What  my  predecessor  said  to  the  French  ecclesiastics 
whom  he  received  may  still  more  truly  be  said  to  our 
Greek  guests  to-day  :  "There  ought  to  be  no  secret  antipa- 
thies between  Churches  for  which  no  reason  can  be  given, 
but  let  every  house  sweep  the  dust  from  their  own  door." 
We  have  our  vocation ;  the  Greeks  have  theirs.  We 
have  our  faults  ;  they  have  theirs.  We,  each  of  us,  have 
dust  before  our  doors.  But  let  each  of  us  sweep  out 
our  own  dust,  and  not  insist  on  taking  possession  of  our 
neighbour's  house  to  sweep  out  his  dust.  Let  us  each  do 
this,  and  we  shall  be  pursuing  the  best,  because  the  only 
practicable,  course  toward  the  attainment  of  our  common 
end,  the  reunion,  in  this  sense,  of  the  divisions  of  Christen- 
dom.' 

The  peaceful  opening  of  the  year  1870  strikingly  con- 
trasted with  the  events  of  its  later  months.  On  the  18th 
of  July,  the  same  day  on  which  the  Papal  decree  of  infal- 
libility was  promulgated  at  Rome,  the  declaration  of  war 
between  France  and  Germany  burst  like  a  thunderclap 
upon  Europe.  At  that  moment  the  storm  raised  by  the 
so-called  '  Westminster  Scandal,'  occasioned  by  the  admis- 
sion of  Dr.  Vance  Smith  to  the  Sacrament,  was  raging. 
'  Surely,'  writes  Stanley  to  Hugh  Pearson,  '  this,  like  many 
other  ridiculous  things,  must  be  withered  up  in  the  pres- 
ence of  this  terrible  catastrophe  of  the  war.'  A  few  weeks 
later  (August  12th,  1870)  he  wishes  success  with  all  his 
heart  to  Germany  : 

'  The  news  from  the  war  is,  I  think,  the  most  deeply, 
awfully  interesting  of  any  public  event  that  I  remember. 
The  war  itself  appeared  to  me  the  most  wicked  and  cause- 
less that  I  have  ever  heard  of ;  because,  although  equally 
useless  and  causeless  wars  have  been  waged  in  former 
times,  none  has  been  waged  so  causelessly  and  wantonly 
in  the  full  light  and  security  of  civilised  ages  ;  and  for  this 
I  regard  the  French  as  alone  responsible.' 


CHAP.  XXV     THE  POPE'S  TEMPORAL  POWER 


383 


He  followed  every  stage  in  the  struggle  with  the  closest 
interest.  The  month  of  August  was  spent  in  Scotland  in 
paying  'a  succession  of  visits  to  various  relations  —  cousins, 
brothers,  sisters.  It  was  quite  as  well  to  be  thus  employed, 
for  it  was  impossible  to  live  out  of  reach  of  newspapers  in 
this  exciting  time.'  September  found  him  still  in  the 
North.  '  We  count  the  hours,'  he  tells  M.  de  Circourt,  'for 
the  arrival  of  the  journals,  which  probably  give  us  more 
information  than  you  have  in  Paris.  The  drama  is  indeed 
working  itself  out  with  fearful  rapidity.'  The  news  of  the 
battle  of  Sedan  reached  him  on  the  field  of  Culloden. 
'  I  go  with  the  Prussians  entirely,'  he  says,  '  except  in  the 
bombardment  of  Strasbourg.'  But,  however  just  he  might 
feel  the  retribution  to  be,  he  could  not  withhold  his  sym- 
pathy from  the  vanquished  party.  '  It  is,'  he  writes, 
'  impossible  not  to  feel  pity  for  the  bitter  mortifications 
which  this  unhappy  Emperor  and  this  vainglorious  nation 
must  now  be  enduring.' 

Another  political  event  of  the  summer  of  the  same  year, 
to  which  his  letters  frequently  allude,  was  the  fall  of  the 
Pope's  temporal  power.  'It  is,'  he  says  in  September  1870, 
'  rather  a  grief  to  me.  It  had  been  so  much  reduced  that 
it  did  very  little  harm,  and  I  am  afraid  that  the  spiritual 
power,  which  is  only  another  kind  of  temporal  power,  will 
be  much  more  mischievous  without  the  moderating  checks 
involved  in  the  regal  position.'  He  saw  in  the  Prince- 
Bishop  of  Rome  the  last  and  greatest  survivor  of  the  old 
mixed  sovereignties  which  had  once  been  common  ;  his 
picturesque  feeling  resented  the  destruction  of  a  quaint 
historical  anomaly ;  he  loved  Rome  in  its  mediaeval  as  well 
as  its  classic  aspects ;  he  deplored  an  event  which  tended 
to  convert,  by  the  artificial  process  of  a  sudden  annexa- 
tion, the  one  spot  in  Europe  that  was  the  home  of 
strange  ecclesiastical  customs,  and  of  poetic  and  artistic 


384 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


ruins,  into  the  commonplace  capital  of  a  kingdom  of 
yesterday. 

One  result  of  the  stirring  events  which  disturbed  the 
Continent  was  that  it  made  a  foreign  tour  impracticable, 
and  compelled  him  to  spend  the  whole  of  his  autumn 
holiday  in  Scotland. 

Years  before  his  marriage  had  bound  him  by  personal 
ties  to  Scotland,  the  country  had  laid  upon  him  a  spell 
which  never  relaxed  its  hold.  Of  all  the  great  names  in 
literature,  none  was  so  dear  to  him  as  that  of  Walter  Scott, 
the  noblest  —  as  he  delighted  to  call  him- — and  purest  writer 
of  fiction,  and  'one  of  the  greatest  religious  teachers  of 
Scottish  Christendom.'  'I  am,'  he  used  to  say,  'of  the 
religion  of  Walter  Scott.'  As  a  child  Stanley  had  been 
fascinated  by  the  writings  of  one  to  whom  he  gives  the 
title  of  'a  second  Shakespeare.'  Each  successive  book, 
whether  poem  or  novel,  was  eagerly  anticipated  and 
greedily  devoured,  and  the  glamour  of  Scott's  'wizard 
notes  '  held  him  as  firmly  at  threescore  as  in  his  impression- 
able boyhood.  '  Find  "  Guy  Mannering  "  and  let  me  take 
the  taste  out  of  my  mouth,'  was  his  remark  after  finishing 
a  novel  of  the  modern  type.  During  the  last  weeks  of  his 
wife's  illness  he  tried  to  beguile  the  heavy  hours  by  reading 
aloud  '  Old  Mortality,'  and  among  the  books  with  which 
he  endeavoured  to  deaden  the  first  agony  of  her  death  was 
'  Redgauntlet.' 

He  was,  perhaps,  himself  hardly  conscious  how  great  a 
debt  he  owed  to  Scott.  In  the  writings  of  the  author  of  the 
Waverley  novels,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  in  the  writings  of 
Stanley,  there  is  something  peculiarly  exhilarating  to  the 
imagination.  Both  men  pursued  the  same  broad,  tolerant 
method  of  regarding  open  questions ;  both  adopted  the  same 
historical  and  synthetical,  rather  than  philosophical  and 
analytical,  treatment  of  character.    Both  loved  to  dwell  in 


CHAP.  XXV     INFLUENCE  OF  WALTER  SCOTT  385 


the  past,  and  both  possessed  the  power  of  revivifying  its 
scenes  and  figures  till  they  lived  again  in  the  present.  To 
both,  vanquished  causes  and  fallen  heroes  appealed  with 
pathetic  force.  Both  treasured  tales  of  Scottish  superstition, 
popular  legends,  and  any  anecdotes  which  illustrated  the 
national  peculiarities,  social  or  theological.  Both  were  en- 
thusiastic students  of  antiquarian  and  mediaeval  lore.  In 
both  there  was  the  same  love  of  the  grandiose,  of  pageantry, 
of  romance,  and  of  chivalry.  It  might  have  been  Stanley, 
if  it  had  not  been  Scott,  who  murmured  the  lay  of  Prince 
Charlie  by  the  Lake  Avernus,  and  stood  wrapt  in  silent 
devotion  before  the  tomb  of  the  Stuarts  in  St.  Peter's. 
Both  men  sympathised  deeply  with  conflicting  schools  of 
opinion  and  feeling,  and  both  held  the  balance  evenly 
between  contending  parties.  The  same  candour  character- 
ised Stanley  which  prompted  Scott,  in  spite  of  his  own 
personal  proclivities,  to  represent  the  highest  Christian  type 
in  Jeanie  Deans,  the  daughter  of  a  Cameronian,  or  in  Bessie 
Maclure,  the  mother  of  two  martyrs  for  the  Covenant.  In 
both  men  there  was  the  same  inclination  to  dwell  upon  the 
higher  rather  than  the  lower  aspects  of  men  or  movements. 
The  same  instinct  which  led  Scott,  while  fully  alive  to  the 
weak,  worldly,  and  trivial  side  of  the  Jacobite  cause,  to  dwell 
upon  its  noble,  chivalrous,  poetic  aspects,  governed  Stanley 
in  all  his  judgments  of  human  action.  Both  were,  as  writers, 
careless  of  form  in  comparison  with  matter.  In  the  private 
characters  of  both  there  was  the  same  wide  humanity  which 
treated  all  the  world  as  blood-relations,  the  same  faithful- 
ness to  a  wide  circle  of  friends,  the  same  reservation  of 
their  inner  selves  for  their  few  chosen  intimates.  Even 
Stanley's  pugnacity  has  in  it  something  of  Scott's  '  Sound, 
sound  the  clarion  ! ' 

Before  he  knew  anything  by  personal  observation  of 
Scotland,  Stanley  was  steeped  in  the  weird  magic  atmo- 
VOL.  II  cc 


386 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


sphere  that  the  Wizard  of  the  North  had  breathed  from 
childhood.  The  genius  of  the  country  —  with  its  wild 
scenery,  its  witch-tenanted  heaths,  its  haunted  castles,  its 
prophetic  dooms  on  royal  houses  and  great  families  — 
penetrated  his  soul,  and  enveloped  him  in  the  same  mist 
of  wonders  in  which  it  had  nursed  its  own  'poetic  child.' 
To  a  degree  experienced  by  few  natives  of  the  country  he 
became  saturated  with  the  romantic  suggestions  and 
associations  of  Scottish  history  or  story.  '  No  history,'  he 
says,  '  of  any  European  State  has  been  so  romantic  as  that 
of  Scotland.  Whatever  of  early  romance  England  has  had 
to  show  pales  before  the  stories  of  Robert  Bruce  and  James 
the  Fifth.'  Nor  did  these  impressions  belong  only  to  the 
remote  ox  mediaeval  past.  The  wild  physical  surroundings 
of  storm  and  mist  seemed  to  him  to  have  preserved  intact 
that  spiritual  atmosphere  of  credulity  and  imagination 
which  is  the  parent  of  legend  and  romance.  In  the  stories 
of  the  Covenanters  are  revived  tales  as  strange  as  any  that 
have  clustered  round  the  early  saints.  In  the  career  of 
Charles  Edward  is  enacted  the  last  romance  of  Europe. 
It  is  significant  that  the  only  public  allusion  which  he 
ever  made  to  his  own  ancestry  was  made  before  a  Scottish 
audience.  In  describing  the  marvellous  promise  of  Alex- 
ander Stewart,  the  son  of  James  IV.,  the  pupil  of 
Erasmus,  'the  young  Marcellus  of  the  Scottish  Church,' 
who  died  at  Flodden,  he  goes  on  to  say :  —  'If  he  fell  in 
the  memorable  charge  of  my  namesake  on  that  fatal  day, 
may  he  accept  thus  late  the  lament  which  a  kinsman  of  his 
foe  would  fain  pour  over  his  untimely  bier.'^ 

True  to  his  own  belief  that  original  records  are  not  con- 
fined to  contemporaneous  histories  or  contemporaneous 
literature,  he  studied  the  movements  of  actors  in  Scottish 

1  The  Study  of  Greatness:  Inaugural  Address  delivered  before  the  Uni- 
versity of  St.  Andrews  on  March  31st,  1875,  p.  46. 


CHAP.  XXV    ROMANCE  OF  SCOTTISH  HISTORY  387 

history  on  the  spots  where  they  lie  —  among  the  mountains, 
the  streams,  or  shapeless  stones  which  survive  even  history 
and  tradition  and  legend.  And  as  autumn  after  autumn 
passed  away,  and  he  visited  one  after  another  of  the  scenes 
rich  in  legendary,  or  poetic,  or  religious,  or  historic  interest, 
the  fascination  of  Scotland  grew  upon  him.  In  the  second 
of  his  inaugural  lectures  as  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory he  urges  upon  his  hearers  the  importance  of  studying 
a  movenlent  in  the  place  of  its  origin,  if  its  spirit  is  to  be 
rightly  grasped.  He  had  but  lately  returned  from  a  tour 
in  Scotland,  and  his  first  illustration  of  the  value  of  such  a 
study  is  taken  from  the  history  of  the  Scottish  Covenanters. 
Their  '  stubborn  endurance,'  their  '  thirst  for  vengeance,' 
their  'investment  of  the  narrowest  questions  of  discipline 
with  the  sacredness  of  universal  principles,'  cannot  be 
adequately  realised  except  among  '  the  caves  and  moors 
and  moss  hags  of  the  Western  Lowlands,'  within  hearing 
of  the  cry  of  the  peewits  which  circle  round  the  encamp- 
ments on  the  hillsides. 

In  the  religious  history  of  Scotland  he  took  an  undying 
interest.  And  he  knew  it,  it  may  be  truly  said,  better  than 
most  Scotchmen.  His  keen  sense  of  the  humour,  the 
shrewdness,  the  kindliness  of  the  national  character,  made 
him  appreciate  the  Scottish  people,  and  attracted  him 
towards  the  clergy.    *I  am  sure,'  he  writes  in  1870, 

'that  it  is  impossible  to  find  anywhere  a  more  excellent 
form  of  Christian  clergy  than  some  of  those  that  I  have 
been  lately  seeing  of  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland.' 

'  I  certainly  think,'  he  says  in  a  letter  describing  his 
visit  to  Edinburgh  in  January  1872, 

'that  the  main  peculiarity  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  in 
which  it  excels  our  own,  is  its  humour.  The  fund  of 
ecclesiastical  stories  is  quite  infinite.    And  it  is  certain 


388 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


that  the  clergy  of  the  Established  Church  are  the  only 
clergy  cast  in  the  same  mould  with  ourselves.' 

A  Church  in  which  he  found  the  virtues  that  he  attri- 
buted to  an  established  Church,  and  which  possessed  also 
the  saving  gift  of  humour,  strongly  appealed  to  his  sympa- 
thies. Added  to  this,  there  was  no  religious  history  in 
which  he  discovered  such  rich  elements  of  romance.  He 
delighted  to  follow  St.  Ninian  across  the  trackless  wilds  of 
Galloway,  to  the  cave  beneath  the  samphire-covered  cliff  of 
Glenluce  Bay ;  or  to  stand  in  the  deserted  churchyard 
of  Kirk  Madreen,  by  the  weather-beaten  column  which 
preserved  the  first  authentic  trace  of  Christian  civilisation. 
On  the  shores  of  the  Firth  of  Forth  he  had  penetrated  to 
the  venerable  hermitage  of  St.  Serf,  and  to  the  romantic 
Chapel  of  Culross,  where  the  saint  discovered  the  infant 
Kentigern,  his  '  darling  Mungo.'  From  the  oak-groves  of 
Derry  he  had  traced  the  steps  of  Columba  to  the  white 
beach  of  lona,  on  which  he  drove  his  coracle,  and  from 
which  he  yet, 

Throned  on  his  towers,  conversing  with  the  storm, 
Counts  every  wave-worn  isle  and  mountain  hoar 
From  Kilda  to  the  green  lerne's  shore. 

Nor  was  it  only  the  legendary  associations  of  the  Celtic 
saints,  or  the  vestiges  of  the  early  faith  that  they  recalled, 
which  interested  him.  It  was  in  the  same  spirit  that  he 
pictured  to  himself,  among  the  shattered  relics  of  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  Andrews,  the  execution  of  Wishart  and 
the  murder  of  Beaton ;  or  followed  the  daring  exploits  of 
Claverhouse,  and  gathered  the  tales  that  linger  of  his 
black  charger ;  or,  in  St.  Giles's  Cathedral,  re-enacted  the 
scene  of  Jenny  Geddes^;  or  dwelt  at  Anwoth  on  the 

2  The  inscription  placed  on  the  tablet  erected  to  the  memory  of  James 
Hannay,  Dean  of  the  Cathedral,  who  read  the  Service-book  on  the  occasion 


CHAP.  XXV    SCOTTISH  RELIGIOUS  CHARACTER  389 


kindlier  aspects  in  the  stern  character  of  Rutherford  ;  or 
stood  in  the  churchyard  of  Badenoch  by  the  graves  of 
Margaret  Wilson  and  Margaret  Maclachlan,  the  Wigton- 
shire  martyrs  ;  or  explored  the  scene  of  the  murder  of 
Archbishop  Shairp  on  Magus  Moor. 

It  was  with  Scott  as  his  guide  that  he  steered  through 
the  mazes  of  the  Scottish  religious  character  and  history. 
Wherever  he  went  the  creations  of  imaginative  genius 
accompanied,  if  they  did  not  sometimes  dwarf  into  compara- 
tive insignificance,  the  actors  in  real  history.  Especially 
was  this  true  of  Scott's  fictitious  characters.  At  Tours, 
Quentin  Durward  occupied  his  mind  fully  as  much  as 
Louis  XI.  When  he  visited  the  Roman  Wall  he  re- 
membered how  Bertram,  crossing  the  Border  to  stay  with 
Dandie  Dinmont,  reflected  among  the  remains  of  the  mighty 
rampart  on  the  greatness  of  the  Roman  Empire.  In  the 
wilds  of  Galloway,  it  was  at  least  as  much  his  object  to 
explore  the  wanderings  of  Guy  Mannering  as  those  of 
St.  Ninian.    'We  went,'  he  writes  in  1870, 

'  to  Sweetheart  Abbey,  after  a  hasty  tour  through  Galloway 
in  search  of  Ellangowan,  which  we  failed  somehow  to  find. 
Amongst  other  curious  things,  we  happened  to  sleep  one 
night  in  the  house  of  the  descendants  of  the  family  of  the 
real  Bride  of  Lammermoor  (Lord  Stair),  and  the  next  in 
the  house  of  the  descendants  of  the  bridegroom  (Lord 
Selkirk).' 

No  writer  had,  in  his  opinion,  thrown  so  broad  a  flood 
of  light  as  Scott  upon  the  religious  heart  of  Scotland.  In 
the  splendid  appeal  of  Ephraim  Macbriar  to  his  judges  he 
caught  the  genuine  ring  of  that  fervid  devotion  which  was 
so  marked  a  characteristic  of  Scottish  theology.  In  the 
ravings  of  Habakkuk  Mucklewrath  he  detected  a  natural 

which  roused  the  wrath  of  Jenny  Geddes  in  1637,  revised  by  Stanley.  It 
provoked  a  bitter  controversy.  But  its  accuracy  was  vindicated  by  Colonel 
Fergusson  in  the  Aihenaum  for  January  5th  and  February  2nd,  1884. 


39^ 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1870 


outcome  of  the  wild  violence  of  the  Covenanters.  In  the 
character  of  Balfour  of  Burley  he  saw  that  sharp  contrast 
of  deep-set  religious  zeal,  with  viciousness  of  life,  which 
forms  so  striking  a  phenomenon  in  Scottish  religious  history. 
In  Henry  Morton  he  recognised  the  existence  of  those  en- 
larged and  philosophic  views  of  Christianity  which  accom- 
panied the  subsidence  of  ecclesiastical  violence.  In  David 
Deans  he  saw  the  embodiment  of  the  religious  exclusiveness 
of  Scotland.  In  the  refusal  of  his  daughter  Jeanie  to  give 
up  the  slayer  of  Porteous,  lest  she  should  be  branded,  like 
the  '  fause  Menteith,'  as  a  betrayer  of  her  country,  he  found 
the  patriotic  independence  which  embittered,  while  it  ele- 
vated, religious  animosities.  In  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine 
he  welcomed  the  type  of  an  Episcopalian  layman.  In  the 
saying  of  Pleydell,  '  I  belong  to  the  suffering  Episcopal 
Church  of  Scotland,  which  is  now,  happily,  the  shadow  of 
a  shade,'  he  caught  a  suggestion  of  the  persecution  which 
fell  upon  the  Episcopal  Church  during  and  after  the  Stuart 
Rebellion. 

Nor  did  the  element  of  romance  die  out  from  the 
religious  history  of  Scotland  with  the  nineteenth  century. 
Few  more  dramatic  scenes  were  enacted  —  none,  in  the 
moral  scale,  were  more  impressive  —  than  that  which  took 
place  on  May  i8th,  1843.  that  day  Dr.  Welsh,  the 

ex-Moderator  of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  handed  a  protest  to  the  Queen's  Commissioner, 
and,  with  those  who  had  signed  it,  left  St.  Andrew's  Church, 
and  moved  in  a  long  procession  down  the  northern  slope 
of  Edinburgh  to  Canonmills.   It  was  the  '  great  Disruption  ' 

—  the  secession  of  the  four  hundred  and  seventy-four 
ministers  who  resigned  their  churches,  homes,  and  incomes 
to  found  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland.  With  two  of  the 
leaders  of  that  movement  —  Dr.  Candlish  and  Dr.  Chalmers 

—  Stanley  had  some  personal  acquaintance. 


CHAP.  XXV         FRIENDSHIP  IN  SCOTLAND 


It  was  in  the  year  1843  that  he  paid  his  first  visit  to 
Scotland.  He  was  then  staying  with  his  college  friend, 
George  Moncrieff,  and  he  heard  a  sermon  from  Dr.  Cand- 
lish,  at  that  time  in  the  zenith  of  his  fame.  No  church 
was  large  enough  to  contain  the  crowds  which  flocked  to 
hear  the  preacher.    *  The  service  was  held,'  writes  Stanley, 

'  on  the  mountain-side,  and  the  spectacle  was  very  impres- 
sive. Crowds  of  people  from  all  the  country  round  were 
seated  on  the  ground  to  hear  him,  whilst  he,  from  a  struc- 
ture like  a  watch-box,  which,  I  believe,  they  call  a  "  Tent," 
delivered  consecutively  two  sermons  and  two  services. 

'  I  do  not  recollect  a  single  sentence  of  either  sermon, 
except  one,  in  which  he  dwelt  on  the  pleasure  it  would  be 
to  every  man,  once  in  his  life,  to  have  the  chance  of  starting 
afresh  and  beginning  over  again.  This,  which  was  sug- 
gested the  day  before,  as  we  were  sitting  on  a  bench  over- 
looking the  falls,  had  something  of  a  human  character 
about  it.  All  the  rest  of  both  sermons  was  made  up  of 
vigorous  but  dry  statements  of  Calvinism.' 

Years  after  Stanley  met  Dr.  Candlish  again  at  breakfast 
in  Edinburgh  : 

'  Erskine  of  Linlathen  said  in  his  kindly  way  to  my  dear 
wife,  who  did  not  know  Candlish,  "  You  will  pick  him  out 
directly.  He  is  just  like  a  man  possessed  by  a  demon." 
That  exactly  described  him  —  a  man  of  great  intelligence 
and  character,  with  a  fierce,  fiery  look  about  him  which, 
with  his  wild,  scattered  hair,  did  convey  the  impression  of 
someone  possessed.' 

Of  Dr.  Chalmers  Stanley  says,  Virgiliwn  tantum  vidi. 
In  1847  Chalmers,  fresh  from  the  perusal  of  the  'Life  of 
Thomas  Arnold,'  met  the  young  University  tutor  in  the 
streets  of  Oxford.  'You  have,'  he  said  to  Stanley,  'the 
best  machinery  in  the  world,  and  you  know  not  how  to  use 
it.'  These  words,  taken  down  from  the  lips  of  the  Free 
Church  leader,  were  written  on  a  photograph  of  St.  Mary's 


392 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1870-73 


Church  which  was  the  gift  to  Stanley  of  Dr.  (now  Sir 
Henry)  Acland,  and  was  one  of  his  cherished  posses- 
sions. '  In  front  of  that  academic  church  of  Oxford,' 
writes  Stanley,^ 

'  we  parted,  just  as  he  touched  on  the  question  of  the 
interpretation  of  the  Apocalypse.  "  But  this,"  he  said, 
"is  too  long  to  discuss  here  and  now  ;  you  must  come  and 
finish  our  conversation  when  we  meet  at  Edinburgh." 
That  meeting  never  came.  He  returned  home  ;  and  the 
next  tidings  I  had  of  him  was  that  he  was  departed  out  of 
this  world  of  strife.' 

From  1843  onwards  Stanley's  visits  to  Scotland  became 
numerous,  and  ev^ery  year  his  circle  of  acquaintances 
widened.  Principal  Shairp,  of  St.  Andrews,  had  always 
been  one  of  his  most  intimate  friends.  It  was  on  a  visit 
to  him  that  Stanley  first  became  known  to  three  men  who 
were  in  1856  the  spiritual  flower  of  Scotland  —  John 
Macleod  Campbell,  the  author  of  a  celebrated  book  on  the 
Atonement,  Norman  Macleod,  and  Erskine  of  Linlathen. 
With  two  of  the  three  men  the  acquaintance  ripened  into 
close  friendship.  For  Norman  Macleod  *  Stanley  felt  the 
warmest  admiration  and  affection,  and  to  hold  brief  con- 
verse with  Erskine  of  Linlathen  was,  as  he  said,  '  to  have 
one's  conversation  in  heaven.'  With  the  various  phases 
of  the  whole  religious  history  of  the  country  he  became 
scarcely  less  familiar  than  the  most  erudite  of  Scottish 
divines,  and  in  the  men  and  the  communities  that  were 
making  the  history  of  the  day  he  took  the  keenest  interest. 
It  was  not  till  1872  that  he  preached  his  first  sermon  in  a 
Presbyterian  place  of  worship.  But  after  that  time  he 
seldom  came  to  Scotland  without  preaching  in  one  of  the 

^  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  delivered  at  Edinburgh 
in  1872.    Lecture  iv.,  p.  154. 

*  To  the  memory  of  Dr.  Norman  Macleod  he  paid  a  warm  tribute  in 
Good  Words  for  July  1872. 


CHAP.  XXV 


CHARLES  WORDSWORTH 


393 


parish  churches  of  the  Establishment  at  Erroll,  Dundee, 
Roseneath,  or  Glasgow.  Neither  from  the  Free  Church 
nor  from  the  United  Presbyterians  did  he  ever  receive  an 
invitation  to  preach,  and  consequently  he  never  officiated 
in  the  churches  of  those  communities.  But  on  one  occa- 
sion he  was  present  at  the  '  Jubilee  '  of  a  United  Presbyte- 
rian minister  near  Limekilns,  and  spoke  both  at  the  break- 
fast and  at  the  service  held  in  the  chapel.  The  General 
Assemblies,  both  of  the  Establishment  and  of  the  Free 
Church,  were  objects  of  great  interest  to  him.  He  studied 
their  '  overtures,'  read  their  debates,  and  more  than  once 
attended  their  meetings.  '  I  should  not  have  been  listened 
to  half  as  patiently  in  Convocation,'  was  his  remark  after 
observing  the  fairness  with  which  the  Assembly  of  the 
Establishment  heard  a  long,  aggressive,  and  hostile  speech. 

After  his  marriage  with  Lady  Augusta  Bruce  his  con- 
nection with  Scotland  was  necessarily  drawn  still  closer. 
It  also  assumed  a  different  character.  Every  autumn  he 
spent  some  weeks  in  the  homes  of  his  wife's  relations,  and 
in  almost  every  country-house  in  Scotland  he  became  a 
welcome  guest.  The  delight  which  he  took  in  meeting- 
eminent  persons  was  well  known  to  his  hosts,  and  soon 
there  were  few  men  of  mark  in  the  country,  especially 
among  the  clergy,  to  whom  he  was  not  personally  known. 
Among  his  more  intimate  friends  and  correspondents  were 
men  like  Principal  Caird,  Principal  Tulloch,  Dr.  John  Brown, 
Dean  Ramsay,  Dr.  Guthrie,  Dr.  Alexander  Duff,  Dr.  Wal- 
lace, Professor  Knight,  Dr.  Story,  Professor  Campbell,  Dr. 
Cameron  Lees,  Dr.  Watson,  Dr.  Service,  Bishop  Ewing, 
Bishop  Wordsworth,  and  many  others. 

Of  the  many  friendships  made  by  Stanley  in  his  later 
years  in  Scotland,  none  gave  him  greater  pleasure  than 
that  of  Charles  Wordsworth,  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews.  The 
record  of  their  intercourse  illustrates  many  salient  features 


394 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1870-73 


in  Stanley's  character — his  unwillingness  to  take  offence, 
his  unbounded  hospitality,  the  playfulness  of  his  wit,  his 
desire  to  find  points  of  union  even  with  those  from  whom 
he  differed  most  widely  in  opinions,  in  tastes,  and  in 
accomplishments.  The  Bishop  was  a  High  Church  Tory 
of  the  old  school,  a  fine  scholar,  unrivalled  in  his  master)'-  of 
Latin  versification,  a  cricketer,  an  oarsman,  a  skater,  and 
a  tennis-player.  In  all  these  points  he  was  totally  unlike 
Stanley.  But  the  two  men  were  animated  by  many  com- 
mon feelings,  and  were  especially  united  in  the  constant 
endeavour,  within  their  respective  spheres,  to  conciliate 
discords,  to  remove  distrusts,  and  to  check  extremes. 

The  commencement  of  their  friendship  was  highly 
characteristic.  Charles  Wordsworth's  brother  William,  as 
Canon  of  Westminster  and  Archdeacon,  had  thought  it 
his  duty  publicly  to  oppose  Stanley's  appointment  to  the 
Deanery.  But  the  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews  was  among  the 
first  of  those  whom  the  Dean  invited  to  preach  at  the  ser- 
vices in  the  nave  of  the  Abbey.  It  was  not  till  1871,  how- 
ever, that  the  two  men  became  really  intimate.  Their 
close  friendship  originated  in  the  hospitality  which  Stanley 
and  Lady  Augusta  offered  to  the  members  of  the  New 
Testament  Revision  Company,  and  especially  to  those  who 
came  from  a  distance.  For  nearly  twelve  years,  at  the 
rate  of  ten  months  in  each  year,  and  of  four  days  in  each 
month,  two  or  three  bedrooms  in  the  Deanery  were  placed 
at  the  disposal  of  those  who  were  invited.  'We  were  ex- 
pected,' writes  Bishop  Wordsworth, 

'  to  meet  the  family  party  at  breakfast ;  and  for  the  rest  of 
our  time,  and  for  any  other  meal,  we  were  left  free.  Our 
comfort  could  not  have  been  greater  at  our  own  homes. 
Such  an  instance  of  simple,  public-spirited  hospitality  is, 
I  should  suppose,  quite  unexampled.' 

At  one  of  these  breakfast-parties  the  Bishop  invited  Stan- 


CHAP.  XXV  CHARLES  WORDSWORTH 


395 


ley  to  turn  to  account  the  poetical  powers  which,  through- 
out his  life,  he  frequently  exercised  in  every  style  of  verse 
composition,  grave  as  well  as  gay.  For  one  form  of 
poetry,  indeed,  of  which  he  left  some  characteristic  speci- 
mens, he  felt  that  he  needed  a  special  inspiration.  'It 
v/ould  be,'  he  writes, 

'a  great  pleasure  to  me  if  I  could  leave  behind  me  a  few 
hymns.  How  much  the  memory  of  our  beloved  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's^  will  be  kept  alive  by  his  hymns!  But  they 
seem  to  me  too  sacred  and  serious  to  be  written  unless 
I  am  driven  by  some  special  cause.' ^ 

But  for  the  less  serious  forms  of  verse  his  pen  was 
always  ready.  'In  January  1872,'  writes  the  Bishop  of 
St.  Andrews, 

'  while  we  were  at  breakfast,  I  received  from  Dean  Ramsay 
a  printed  copy  of  some  Latin  Elegiacs,  which  I  had  sent  to 
him  not  long  before,  in  acknowledgment  of  the  twentieth 
edition  of  his  "  Scottish  Reminiscences."  I  let  Stanley 
see  them,  and  suggested  how  pleased  the  old  man  would 
be  if  he  would  turn  them  into  English  verse.  He  did  so, 
and  before  the  end  of  the  day  the  translation  (of  which 
part,  I  think,  was  composed  while  we  were  sitting  at  our 
revision  work  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber)  was  sent  off  by 
post  to  Edinburgh.  It  need  not  be  said  that  good  Dean 
Ramsay  was  charmed.' 

The  Latin  verses  and  the  English  translation  ran  as 
follows  : 

Editio  accessit  vicesima  !  plaudite  qulcquid 

Scotia  festivi  fert  lepidique  ferax  ! 
Non  vixit  frustra,  qui  frontem,  utcunque  severam 

Noverit  innocuis  explicuisse  jocis  : 
Non  frustra  vixit,  qui  tot  monumenta  Priorum 

Salsa  pia  vetuit  sedulitate  mori  : 
Non  frustra  vixif  qui  quali  nos  sit  amore 

Vivendum,  exemplo  praecipiensque  docet. 

Dr.  Milman. 

"  In  an  Appendix  to  this  chapter  will  be  found  three  of  Stanley's  hymns, 
which  are  reprinted  from  the  Westminster  Abbey  Hymn  Book. 


396 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


Nec  merces  te  indigna  manet :  juvenesque  senesque 

Gaudebunt  nomen  concelebrare  tuum ; 
Condiet  appositum  dum  fercula  nostra  salinum, 

Prsebebitque  suas  mensa  secunda  nuces  ; 
Dum  stantis  rhedse  aurigam  tua  pagina  fallet, 

Contentum  in  sella  taedia  longa  pati  ! 
Quid?  quod  et  ipsa  sibi  devinctum  Scotia  nutrix 

Te  perget  gremio  grata  fovere  senem ; 
Officiumque  pium  simili  pietate  rependens, 

Soecula  nulla  sinet  non  '  meminisse  Tui. 

Hail,  twentieth  edition  !    From  Orkney  to  Tweed 
Let  the  wits  of  all  Scotland  come  running  to  read. 
Not  in  vain  hath  he  lived  who  by  innocent  mirth 
Hath  lightened  the  frowns  and  the  furrows  of  earth ; 
Not  in  vain  hath  he  lived  who  will  never  let  die 
The  humours  of  good  times  for  ever  gone  by ; 
Not  in  vain  hath  he  lived  who  hath  laboured  to  give 
In  himself  the  best  proof  how  by  LOVE  we  may  live. 
Rejoice,  my  dear  Dean,  thy  reward  to  behold, 
In  united  rejoicing  of  young  and  of  old  ; 
Remembered  so  long  as  our  board  shall  not  lack 
A  bright  grain  of  salt  or  a  hard  nut  to  crack ; 
So  long  as  the  cabman,  aloft  in  his  seat. 
Broods  deep  o'er  thy  page  as  he  waits  in  the  street. 
Yea,  Scotland  herself,  with  affectionate  care, 
Shall  nurse  an  old  age  so  beloved  and  so  rare, 
And  still  gratefully  seek  in  her  heart  to  enshrine 
One  more  Reminiscence,  and  that  shall  be  thine. 

The  literary  partnership  thus  begun  continued  for  sev- 
eral years.  In  March  1876,  shortly  after  the  death  of 
Lady  Augusta,  Bishop  Wordsworth  repeated  to  Stanley 
a  Latin  inscription  which  he  proposed  to  place  on  the  walls 
of  a  summer-house.  The  first  distich  expresses  the  feel- 
ing of  a  heathen ;  the  second  gives  the  answer  of  a 
Christian.    The  Dean's  English  version  might  have  been 

'  Alluditur  ad  titulum  libri  Reminiscences,  &c. 


CHAP.  XXV       ^BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER' 


397 


the  spontaneous  utterance  of  a  thought  that  after  1876 
was  ever  uppermost  in  his  heart : 

Inveni  portum  :  spes  et  fortuna,  valete  ! 

Sat  me  lusistis ;  ludite  nunc  alios. 
Immo  alii  inveniant  ego  quem,  Christo  auspice,  portum, 

Spes  ubi  non  fallax,  Forsque  perennis  adest. 

Hail,  happy  haven  !    By  this  tranquil  shore 
From  life's  long  storms  I  find  an  easy  port : 

False  Hope  and  fickle  Fortune,  now  no  more 
My  course  beguile  :  —  let  others  be  your  sport. 

Hail,  happier  Haven  still !    May  others,  too, 
Led  by  their  Lord,  find  here  what  I  have  found ; 

With  Hope  more  sure  than  earth's  vain  fancies  knew. 
With  brighter  Bliss  than  this  world's  fortune  crowned. 

Once  more,  in  August  1878,  shortly  before  Stanley  left 
England  for  America,  he  met  Wordsworth  at  Megginch 
Castle.    'The  day  I  was  there,'  writes  the  Bishop, 

'  I  finished  some  Latin  verse,  which  had  been  running 
in  my  head  the  day  before,  on  Lord  Beaconsfield's  return 
from  Berlin  ;  and  remembering  what  had  taken  place  in 
reference  to  my  Elegiacs  on  Dean  Ramsay's  book,  I 
showed  them  to  Stanley,  and  asked  him  to  give  me  a 
translation  of  them,  which  I  might  send  to  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  with  the  original.' 

A  few  days  afterwards  the  Bishop  received  an  English 
version  of  his  Latin  poem,  from  which  the  following  lines 
are  taken  : 

To  the  Right  Hon.  the  Earl  of  Beaco7isfield. 

Hail  to  the  chief  who  in  triumph  returns  ! 

Peace,  but  with  honour,  his  footsteps  attends ; 
Heart  of  old  England  with  gratitude  burns. 

City  with  country  its  welcoming  blends. 

Shines  here  no  helmet,  here  glitters  no  sword. 

Trumpet  sounds  none  in  the  long,  crowded  street ; 


398 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


Citizens  only  his  cavalcade  guard, 

Flowers  from  fair  hands  this  new  conqueror  greet. 

Brighter  the  hopes  that  his  victories  fill 

Than  trophies  won  hard  on  the  red  battle-field ; 

A  sword  in  his  voice,  and  a  host  in  his  will, 

That  daunts  all  aggression  and  dares  —  not  to  yield. 

Genius  prepared  both  for  faction  and  fighting ; 

Patriot  on  fire  for  a  land  not  his  own  : 
Eastern  and  Western  in  Congress  uniting. 

Swayed  by  his  counsel,  their  quarrels  condone. 

Apology  of  the  Translator  to  the  Original. 

What  English  bard  can  rival  such  Latinity, 

True  classic  child  of  Christ  Church  and  of  Trinity? 

Yet  still,  when  Whig  with  Tory  thus  combines 

The  glories  of  a  Premier  to  rehearse, 
Mark  how  the  Whig's  untrammell'd  freedom  shines 

Whene'er  he  quits  the  Tory's  gloomy  verse  — 
And  though  hard  bound  within  the  Bishop's  fetter. 
The  Presbyter  prefers  the  spirit,  not  the  letter. 

The  Latin  original,  together  w^ith  the  English  version, 
were  sent  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  Andrewrs  to  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  with  whom  he  had  had  no  previous  acquaintance. 
He  received  the  following  reply  : 

'  Hughenden  Manor :  August  26th,  1878. 

'  Dear  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews,  —  It  is  the  happiest  union 
since  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

'  I  am  deeply  gratified  by  such  an  expression  of  sym- 
pathy from  men  so  distinguished  for  their  learning  and 
genius. 

'  Your  faithful  and  obliged  servant, 

'  Beaconsfield.' 

From  that  time  the  Bishop  and  the  Dean  amused  them- 
selves by  corresponding  as  Francis  Beaumont  and  John 
Fletcher,  the  Dean  taking  the  name  of  Fletcher  because, 
like  the  Elizabethan  dramatist,  he  was  the  son  of  a  Bishop. 


CHAP.  XXV 


LORD  SHAFTESBURY 


399 


Two  years  later  Stanley  met  Lord  Beaconsfield  at 
Hatfield,  and  gives  an  account  of  their  conversation. 
'  You  ask,'  writes  '  Fletcher  '  to  '  Beaumont,' 

'  about  Lord  Beaconsfield  at  Hatfield.  Perhaps  the  most 
memorable  incident  was  that  a  discussion  arising,  as  is 
almost  inevitable  in  that  historic  house,  about  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots,  I  ventured  to  observe  that  the  sensation  occasioned 
by  Darnley's  murder  (an  event  so  common  in  Scotland  at 
that  period  as  not  to  demand  any  special  notice)  was  due 
to  its  extraordinary  mode  —  explosion  ;  and  I  proceeded  to 
add  that  three  explosions,  or  would-be  explosions,  had 
taken  place  in  English  history,  all  of  them  producing  serious 
results:  —  (i)  Explosion  of  the  Kirk  of  Field,  destroying 
the  character  of  Queen  Mary.  (2)  Explosion  of  the  Parlia- 
ment by  Guy  Fawkes,  inducing  the  No  Popery  sentiment. 
(3)  Explosion  of  the  Clerkenwell  Prison,  destroying  the 
Church  of  Ireland.  At  this  moment  Lord  B.  entered, 
and  Lady  Salisbury  exclaimed  at  the  want  of  sequence  in 
my  third  instance.  "  Do  you  not  see  it "  said  Lord  B.  ; 
"it  is  transparent  to  the  humblest  capacity.  A  ^Jtontli 
afterivards  came  the  solemn  declaration  of  W.  E.  G.  on 
the  subject  at  Edinburgh  !  "  On  going  to  the  Rye  House 
with  him,  and  speaking  of  Dryden,  he  ejaculated,  "No  one 
reads  Dryden  now. 

The  Little  lVa^::;g;oner  and  Peter  Bell 
Think  scorn  of  him  who  wrote  Achitophel." 

Are  these  lines  his  own  '  ^ 

Another  instance  of  Stanley's  lifelong  love  of  verse 
composition  may  be  quoted  here,  because,  like  his  friend- 
ship with  Bishop  Wordsworth,  it  illustrates  the  friendly 
relations  which  he  delighted  to  maintain  with  men  from 
whose  opinions  he  strongly  dissented.  In  their  theological 
views  and  their  ecclesiastical  policy  no  two  persons  could 
differ  more  widely  than  Stanley  and  Lord  Shaftesbury. 

^  The  lines  occur  in  Don  Juan,  Canto  III. : 

'  The  little  boatman  and  his  Peter  Bell 
Can  sneer  at  him  who  drew  Achitophel.' 


400 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1873 


Yet  the  lines  quoted  below  show  how  kindly  were  the 
personal  feelings  which  the  Dean  entertained  for  the 
Christian  philanthropist.  In  1873  Lord  Shaftesbury  wrote 
to  the  late  Canon  Conway,  suggesting  that  some  new  and 
younger  chairman  should  be  found  for  the  Society  for  Pro- 
moting Window-gardening  among  the  Working-classes  of 
Westminster,  which  held  its  annual  flower  show  in  Dean's- 
Yard.  He  added  that  he  was  in  the  condition  of  a  tree 
which,  as  Lucan  says,  '  casts  a  shadow  no  longer  by  its 
leaves,  but  only  by  its  stem.'  Canon  Conway  sent  the 
note  to  Stanley,  who  returned  it  with  the  following  verses : 

'  Triinco,  non  frondibus,  efficit  umbram^ 

Well  said  old  Lucan ;  often  have  I  seen 

A  stripling  tree  all  foliage  and  all  green, 

But  not  a  hope  of  grateful  soothing  shade, 

Its  empty  strength  in  fluttering  leaves  displayed. 

Give  me  the  solid  trunk,  the  aged  stem 

That  rears  its  scant  but  glorious  diadem ; 

That  through  long  years  of  battle  or  of  storm 

Has  striven  whole  forests  round  it  to  re-form ; 

That  plants  its  roots  too  deep  for  man  to  shake, 

That  lifts  its  head  too  high  for  grief  to  break  ; 

That  still,  through  lightning-flash  and  thunder-stroke, 

Retains  its  vital  sap  and  heart  of  oak. 

Such  gallant  tree  for  me  shall  ever  stand, 

A  great  rock's  shadow  in  a  weary  land. 

The  result  was  that  Lord  Shaftesbury  withdrew  his 
suggestion,  and,  as  long  as  he  lived,  annually  presided  at 
the  gathering  in  the  College  gardens. 

Nor  was  it  only  for  Church  dignitaries  or  veteran  states- 
men that  his  pen  was  active.  He  was  as  ready  at  sixty 
to  soothe  a  child's  sorrow  for  the  loss  of  a  pet  as  he  had 
been  when  himself  a  child  at  Alderley.  The  following 
lines  are  taken  from  a  little  poem  which  was  written  in 


CHAP.  XXV  VERSES  FOR  CHILDREN- 


401 


1870  for  the  children  of  Canon  Holland,  whose  pet  dove 
had  been  killed  by  a  parrot.  They  illustrate,  if  not  his 
poetic  powers,  his  habit  of  seeking  historical  parallels,  as 
well  as  his  tenderness  and  sympathy. 

Who  kill'd  my  little  dove, 
Emblem  of  peace  and  love?  — 
Who  kill'd  my  little  dove  ? 

So  the  poor  children  wept  their  favourite  lost 
When  his  sweet  corpse  their  playful  pathway  crost. 
So  Europe  wept  when  Peace  was  cast  aside. 
When  the  pure  dove  of  halcyon  moments  died. 

'  I,'  said  the  Parrot, 
As  red  as  a  carrot, 
'  So  gay  and  so  smart, 
I  tore  out  the  heart 
Of  the  good  little  dove, 
Emblem  of  peace  and  love.' 

So  spake  the  bird  within  his  gilded  cage, 
Filled  with  fierce  vanity  and  empty  rage. 
So  spake  the  Imperial  Parrot,  full  of  swagger, 
With  eyes  like  bayonets,  and  beak  like  dagger. 

Stanley  had  but  just  returned  from  Scotland  when  the 
news  reached  him  of  the  death  of  his  aunt,  Maria  Hare,  on 
November  12th,  1870.  'The  day  of  the  funeral  at  Hurst- 
monceux  was,'  he  writes  to  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley, 

'wild  and  stormy,  but  with  occasional  gleams  of  light,  and 
Pevensey  Level  looked  beautiful  in  its  shade  and  sunshine. 

'  Poor  Augustus  !  To  him,  it  is  the  end  of  a  blessed  service 
of  more  than  a  son's  affection.  To  me,  it  is  the  uprooting 
of  a  thousand  memories  —  Stoke,  Hodnet,  Hurstmonceux, 
Augustus,  Julius,  Marcus,  the  Bunsens  —  the  last  of  our 
dearest  mother's  family.  How  far  we  seem  on  our  way  to 
join  them  !  How  blessed  the  passage  from  this  darkening, 
lurid  scene ! 

'I  think  that  the  point  which  most  brightly  shines  out 

VOL.  II  D  D 


402  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1870 

from  my  dear  Auntie's  character  is  her  unaffected  cheerful- 
ness. Her  Hfe  was,  in  some  respects,  one  of  much  suffer- 
ing, yet,  also,  most  happy.' 

Throughout  the  winter  months  of  1870-71  the  fate  of 
Paris  was  the  one  absorbing  topic  of  conversation  in 
London.  Stanley  himself  had,  as  he  says,  '  lost  all  interest 
in  the  war,  except  the  one  supreme  interest  of  seeing  its 
termination.  Its  continuance  is  so  heartrending,  and  so 
demoralising  to  both  nations,  that  no  evil  resulting  from  a 
peace  to  either  side  seems  to  me  so  great  as  its  prolonga- 
tion.' To  the  protracted  agony  of  the  siege  succeeded  the 
short  and  sudden  horrors  of  the  Commune.  '  I  am,'  he 
says,  'quite  struck  down  by  it,  and  can  think  of  nothing 
else.'  No  sooner  was  peace  restored  in  the  French  capital 
than  he  hurried  to  Paris,  partly  to  escort  Mme.  Mohl  to 
her  home,  partly  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  ruin  and 
devastation.  Much  was  condensed  into  the  short  visit  of 
five  days  in  June  1870.  The  day  after  his  arrival  in  Paris 
the  funeral  of  the  murdered  Archbishop  Darboy  was  cele- 
brated—  'very  solemn,  but  too  long,  and  not  well  attended. 
We  were  in  Notre  Dame  from  8  a.m.  to  1.30  p.m.'  In  the 
Theatre  of  Versailles  he  heard  a  debate  of  the  Assembly 
on  the  Orleans  Princes  —  '  the  exact  counterpart  of  the 
debate  in  1848,  with  the  speech  of  Thiers  as  the  analogue 
of  that  of  Lamartine.'  Visits  to  friends  and  the  close  in- 
spection of  the  various  ruins  filled  up  the  interval  before 
his  return  to  London,  which  he  describes  as  the  return 

Back  from  the  jaws  of  death, 
Back  from  the  gates  of  hell. 

The  summer  holiday  in  1871  began  with  the  usual  visit 
to  Scotland.  On  August  9th  the  Scott  Centenary  was 
celebrated  at  Edinburgh.  At  six  o'clock  two  thousand 
guests  sat  down  to  a  banquet  in  the  Corn  Exchange. 
Among  the  speakers  was  Stanley. 


CHAP.  XXV  BATTLE-FIELD  OF  SEDAN 


403 


'The  speeches  began  at  once,  and  lasted  without  any 
intermission,  except  two  or  three  songs,  till  eleven. 
Partly  from  the  size  of  the  hall,  partly  from  its  acoustic 
deficiencies,  it  was  almost  impossible  to  be  heard  throughout. 
Each  set  of  speakers,  therefore,  seemed  to  the  other  to  be 
on  the  opposite  side  of  a  vast  roaring  river,  each  heard  only 
by  snatches  across.  I  never  heard  Lord  Houghton  speak 
so  well ;  indeed  it  was  perfect.  Wonderful  to  say,  he  and 
I  were  amongst  the  few  that  were  heard  throughout.' 

In  the  previous  year  Stanley  had  failed  to  explore 
Galloway,  '  partly  from  the  ignorance  of  hosts,  partly  from 
the  impenetrable  mist  which  veiled  all  the  essential  features 
of  this  remote  corner.'  With  his  usual  pertinacity  he  tried 
again,  and  by  the  aid  of  Dr.  Stuart,  '  the  chief  antiquary  of 
Scotland,'  succeeded  in  tracing  the  footsteps  of  St.  Ninian 
and  his  companions.  On  such  an  expedition  he  cared 
nothing  for  fatigue  or  for  the  distances  which  he  drove. 
'  It  was  already  6  p.m.,'  he  writes, 

'  when  we  started  on  our  way  back  to  Monteath,  which  we 
had  left  at  10,  and  did  not  reach  till  1.30  a.m.,  having  made 
a  journey  of  74  miles.  Often  did  I  think  of  Guy  Manner- 
ing's  midnight  travels  in  those  parts,  in  the  never-failing 
hope  of  reaching  Kippletringan.' 

At  the  beginning  of  September  1871  Stanley  left  Eng- 
land for  the  Continent.  His  first  object  was  to  explore 
the  battle-fields  of  the  recent  war. 

'Sedan  we  reached  at  11,  and  took  a  carriage,  in  which 
we  drove  incessantly  till  4  p.m.  over  every  part  of  the 
field.  It  was  most  interesting  —  as  if  five  or  six  battles 
had  been  fought.  Everywhere  were  graves  marked  by 
white  crosses  with  garlands.  The  general  features  are 
clear  enough  :  the  vast  plain  enclosed  by  the  hills  which 
the  Germans  surrounded,  and  the  Belgian  frontier  coming 
down  on  two  sides. 

*  There  is  a  valley  in  the  midst  of  the  plain,  where  there 
was  a  charge  of  cuirassiers  corresponding  to  the  charge  of 
Balaclava.    They  all  perished.    Close  by  was  an  old  stone 


D  D  2 


404  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1871 


cross,  exactly  a  counterpart  in  situation  to  that  imagined 
in  "  Marmion  "  as  the  spot  from  which  he  saw  the  battle. 
A  beautiful  wooded  stream  skirts  one  side  of  the  plain. 
On  its  banks  are  two  burial-grounds,  somewhat  better 
tended  than  the  rest.  There  are  several  gravestones  :  — 
"  Hier  ruhen  zusammen  in  Gott  20  Franzosen  und  28  Deut- 
schen,  welche  gefallen  sind  treu  ihrer  Pflicht  i  Sept.  1871." 

'  We  finished  by  seeing,  first  the  little  house  where  the 
Emperor  of  the  French  had  his  interview  with  Bismarck, 
and  then  the  larger  Chateau  of  Bellevue,  where  he  made 
the  final  capitulation  with  the  King.  The  cottage  is  close 
to  the  roadside.  The  woman  who  was  present  at  the 
scene  took  us  up  by  a  small  back  stairs,  the  same  by  which 
the  Emperor  and  Bismarck  had  mounted,  into  two  very 
small  rooms.  In  the  inner  of  these  they  sate  down  for  a 
few  minutes  at  a  table  with  two  chairs.  Then  they  rose 
and  went  out  to  sit  before  the  house  on  two  other  chairs, 
one  of  which  had  since  been  carried  off  by  Bismarck,  the 
other  by  a  Prussian  officer. 

'  Bismarck  then  rode  off  to  the  headquarters  of  the 
King,  and  left  the  Emperor,  who  remained  in  the  little 
room  upstairs  for  three  hours.  She  waited  outside.  She 
heard  him  call,  "  Entrez."  She  entered.  He  was  sitting 
(she  sate  herself  at  the  table  to  imitate  him)  with  his  head 
between  his  hands,  and,  without  ever  looking  up,  ordered 
her  to  call  one  of  the  French  generals.  The  general  came, 
and  the  Emperor  received  him  in  like  manner,  never  rais- 
ing his  head.  At  10  a.m.  Bismarck  returned  "en  grande 
tenue,"  with  what  she  called  the  "  huissiers  de  mort  "  — 
a  troop  like  the  Black  Brunswickers  —  to  escort  him  to  the 
Bellevue  Chateau.  As  he  went  out  he  gave  her  five  gold 
pieces,  which  she  has  had  framed  and  hung  up ;  "  Bon 
enfant,"  she  said  —  the  one  only  good  word  we  have  heard 
of  the  unfortunate  Emperor  of  the  French. 

'  The  Chateau  de  Bellevue  is  a  house  standing  out  on  a 
sort  of  promontory  overlooking  the  whole  plain.  There 
are  two  small  rooms,  and  a  glass  conservatory  on  the 
ground-floor.  In  one  of  these  he  spoke  with  the  King 
alone  :  in  the  glass  part  with  the  King,  the  Crown  Prince, 
Moltke,  and  Bismarck. 

'  As  one  saw  these  places  it  gave  the  impression  of  how 
completely  the  capitulation  of  Sedan  has  taken  its  place 
among  the  great  events  of  the  world's  history,  where  every 
detail  is  remembered  and  wondered  at.' 


CHAP.  XXV 


POTSDAM 


From  Sedan  he  travelled  by  Metz,  Worth,  and  Stras- 
burg,  to  Cassel,  and  Wilhelmshohe,  '  the  scene  of  the 
Emperor's  imprisonment,  a  truly  regal  refuge.'  Thence 
he  and  his  wife  made  their  way  to  Potsdam,  where  they 
spent  three  days  with  the  Crown  Prince  and  the  Princess 
Royal  at  the  Neue  Palais. 

'  At  the  door  stood  the  Crown  Prince.  A  cordial  wel- 
come, and  immediately  he  showed  us  into  a  suite  of 
splendid  rooms  on  the  ground-floor.  "  In  this  room  I  was 
born,  and  here  many  of  your  countrymen  have  slept  before." 
The  paper  on  the  walls  is  of  peacocks  —  painted.  "  It  is 
exactly  the  same  as  that  in  the  Prefecture  of  Versailles, 
so  that  by  the  peacocks'  tails  there  I  was  constantly  re- 
minded of  my  own  home."  Presently  an  excellent  dinner. 
Before  we  had  finished  the  Prince  came  again  with  the 
Princess,  and  after  some  talk  left  us  to  peaceful  repose. 

'The  next  morning  we  breakfasted  with  them  at  9  a.m., 
with  all  the  children,  including  the  baby,  which  was  carried 
about  while  the  others  ate.  They  are  delightful  children, 
excellently  well  mannered,  and  talking  with  real  intelligence 
—  Prince  William,  Princess  Charlotte,  Prince  Henry,  Prin- 
cess Victoria,  Prince  Waldemar,  and  the  baby  (Sophie). 
Afterwards  we  walked  in  the  gardens,  which  have  all  been 
created  by  the  Crown  Princess.  Before,  there  was  only 
rough  ground  round  the  Palace.  Their  dinner  or  luncheon 
was  at  2  P.M.,  again  with  the  children.  The  dinner  or  supper, 
with  the  household  and  several  guests,  at  7.30  p.m.  or  8  p.m. 

'  The  battle-fields  furnished  endless  topics  of  conversa- 
tion with  the  Prince.  No  one  could  be  more  modest  or 
frank  about  them,  and  we  were  able  from  him  to  get  many 
questions  answered  which  were  suggested  to  us  on  the 
spot,  and  which  no  one  else  could  have  answered. 

'  The  Crown  Prince  is  generally  up  before  breakfast,  at 
his  farm.  After  breakfast  there  is  a  walk  ;  after  luncheon, 
and  after  dinner,  a  talk.  They  all  go  to  bed  at  10  p.m. 
There  are  also  the  drives,  morning  and  evening.  How  the 
intervening  hours  are  spent  I  do  not  know.  One  morning, 
in  this  walk,  the  whole  account  of  the  triumphal  entry  was 
given  by  the  children.  Little  Prince  William  rode  in  with 
his  uncle,  the  Grand  Duke  of  Baden.  "The  Emperor 
stood  for  two  hours  in  the  sun  without  his  hat.  And  he  is 
seventy-three  !  What  do  you  think  of  that  1 "    "  The  flowers 


4o6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1871 


came  sailing  down  from  the  third  and  fourth  storeys  of  the 
houses,  so  that  at  last  you  could  not  see  anything  of  the 
soldiers  but  their  bayonets." 

'It  is  impossible  to  write  all  the  little  anecdotes,  &c., 
which  make  up  the  charm  of  a  visit  like  this.  I  return, 
however,  to  the  thought  that  if  monarchy  is  to  be  saved 
by  any  man  in  this  century,  it  will  be  by  our  host.' 

On  the  22nd,  23rd,  and  24th  of  September  1871,  were 
held  the  meetings  of  the  Old  Catholic  Congress  at  Munich. 
Stanley  was  present  at  the  discussions,  which  were  'ex- 
ceedingly interesting,  and  quite  successful,'  though  he  took 
no  part  in  the  proceedings.  On  his  way  to  the  Bavarian 
capital  he  '  managed  by  a  very  early  rise  to  see  the  scene 
of  Wallenstein's  murder '  at  Eger.  The  Ober-Ammergau 
play  was  seen  once  more,  and  then  the  travellers  crossed 
the  Brenner  Pass  into  Italy,  and  journeyed  to  Rome. 
'  Here  once  again  ! '  he  writes  to  Pearson. 

'  You  would  lament  the  fall  of  the  Pontiff  till  you  got  to 
the  Forum,  and  then  you  would  rejoice  at  the  astounding 
prospect  of  what  will  be.  In  four  years'  time  the  Temple 
and  the  Capitol  will  be  seen  in  their  natural  proportions 
from  the  original  pavement  of  the  Forum,  which  is  now 
rapidly  appearing.  How  singular  that  no  pope  or  cardinal 
should  ever  have  thought  of  doing  so  obvious  a  work ! 

'  Still,  the  interest  of  the  place  is  very  much  curtailed, 
and  there  is  something  very  inappropriate  in  the  substitu- 
tion. It  is  like  turning  Oxford  or  Cambridge  into  a 
capital.' 

'  Our  interview  with  the  Pope,'  he  tells  his  sister, 

*  fell  through,  I  feel  convinced,  in  consequence  of  a  paragraph 
that  appeared  in  one  of  the  Italian  papers  that  "il  padre 
Arthuro  Stanley,"  who  had  just  arrived  in  Rome,  had  been 
at  the  Munich  Conference.  There  is  evidently  a  very 
strong  feeling  against  the  "  Anti-Infallibilists."  In  the  form 
announcing  the  appointment  of  the  new  Archbishop  of 
Paris  in  the  place  of  "  George  Darboy,  deceased,"  there  was 
not  the  faintest  allusion  to  the  tragical  death.  When  I 
noticed  this  to  a  good  old  Catholic  friend  of  Augusta's,  he 


CHAP.  XXV     ILLNESS  OF  PRINCE  OF  WALES 


407 


said,  "  Ah  !  that  was  probably  done  on  purpose.  The  Pope 
was  so  very  much  dissatisfied  with  the  Archbishop.  In 
fact,  '  il  est  mort  fort  a  propos.' 

Returning  through  Paris,  he  went  to  Versailles  to  hear 
the  trial  of  the  Communist  prisoners. 

'  It  was  a  strange  mixture  of  a  court-martial  and  a  court 
of  justice.  The  judges  were  all  military  officers,  but  the 
advocates  were  lawyers.  The  prisoners  were  twenty-seven 
in  number.  One  of  them  was  making  his  defence  in  a 
long,  shrill  speech,  with  just  the  same  futile  arguments  that 
I  remember  in  the  Rush  trial.  They  were  a  miserable  set 
—  not  one  face  among  them  on  which  one  could  rest  with 
pleasure  or  respect.  The  wonder  seemed  to  be  that  they 
ever  could  have  risen  to  the  head  of  affairs.' 

In  the  winter  of  1871-72  the  heart  of  the  English  people 
was  deeply  stirred  by  the  illness  of  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
On  the  issue  of  that  battle  with  death  the  whole  nation 
hung  with  expectation,  possessed  with  one  thought  and 
one  desire,  gathering  round  one  hearth  with  a  renewed 
sense  of  the  nobility  and  sanctity  of  family  affections.  No 
one  could  feel  more  keenly  than  Stanley  with  the  grief  and 
anxiety  of  the  mother,  the  wife,  the  children,  in  whom  were 
for  the  time  impersonated  the  sorrow  and  suspense  through 
which,  sooner  or  later,  every  household  in  the  land  must 
pass.  But  his  sympathy  was  heightened  by  personal  affec- 
tion for  the  Prince,  as  well  as  deepened  by  the  sense  of  the 
value  of  the  life  at  stake,  and  of  the  beneficent  influence 
that  the  heir  to  a  noble  inheritance  might  exercise  over 
the  community. 

It  was  with  these  feelings  that  Stanley  followed  the 
course  of  the  Prince's  illness,  as  the  nation  passed  through 
the  various  stages  of  dread  and  hope  and  thanksgiving. 
Each  successive  stage  is  marked  in  the  three  sermons  ^ 

9  The  National  Thanksgiving:  (i)  '  Death  and  Life,' December  loth,  1871 ; 
(2)  'The  Trumpet  of  Patmos,'  December  17th,  1871  ;  (3)  'The  Day  of 
Thanksgiving,'  March  3rd,  1872.  The  three  sermons  are  reprinted  in  the 
Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 


408 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


which  he  preached  on  December  loth  and  December  17th, 
1871,  and  on  March  3rd,  1872.  In  one  he  dwells  on  the  true 
lessons  of  life  and  death,  in  another  on  the  permanent  good 
to  be  gathered  from  the  national  anxiety,  in  the  third  on 
the  duties  owed  by  the  Throne  to  the  people,  and  by  the 
people  to  the  Throne.  The  last  sermon  was  preached 
before  the  Prince  of  Wales.  '  As  soon  as  I  received  the 
order  for  Thanksgiving,'  he  writes  to  Louisa  Stanley  in 
March  1872, 

'  I  went  to  Marlborough  House  to  suggest,  through  Fisher 
and  Keppel,  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  should  come.  He 
consented  at  once,  and  it  was  agreed  that  he,  the  Princess, 
and  the  Crown  Prince  of  Denmark,  and,  if  in  town,  Prince 
Alfred,  should  come.  I  kept  it  a  secret,  except  from  the 
Canons.  We  met  them  at  the  great  Western  door;  the 
nave  (as  usual)  was  quite  clear.  They  walked  in  with  me, 
and  took  their  places  on  my  right.  I  preached  on  Psalm 
cxxii.  I.  The  Prince  of  Wales  heard  every  word,  and  has 
decided  that  it  shall  be  published,  which  it  will  be,  and 
you  shall  have  a  copy.  It  was  one  of  those  rare  occasions 
on  which  I  was  able  to  say  all  that  I  wished  to  say.  They 
were  conducted  again  to  the  West  door,  and  departed. 

'  Let  this  account  serve  for  the  dear  sister,  too,  who,  I 
hope,  is  with  you.  Oh  !  how  much  I  thought  of  her,  and 
of  the  dear  face  that  is  gone.  It  is  these  moments  which 
bring  back  the  past  indeed.' 

The  strain  of  Stanley's  ceaseless  activities  had  been,  for 
the  last  eight  years,  severe.  It  was  now  increased  by  the 
failure  of  his  efforts  to  put  an  end  to  the  recitation  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed  in  the  public  services  of  the  Church  of 
England.  Tired  of  polemics,  he  meditated  the  discontinu- 
ance of  his  attendance  at  Convocation,  longing  to  retire  to 
his  books,  and  determined  to  '  withdraw  from  all  this  hurly- 
burly.'    '  I  long,'  he  writes  to  Pearson  in  July  1872, 

'  to  set  to  work  at  one  of  my  books.  But  which  }  To  put 
together  all  that  I  have  written  on  the  early  Church, 
Baptism,  the  Lord's  Supper,  &c.  1    Or  on  the  Church  of 


CHAP.  XXV      OLD  CATHOLIC  CONGRESS,  1872 


409 


England?  or  to  begin  at  once  on  the  Maccabees,  &c.?  I 
somewhat  shrink  from  the  latter,  on  account  of  the  books 
on  the  Talmud  not  being  yet  written.' 

'  Do  come,  dear  friend,'  adds  Lady  Augusta  in  a  private 
letter  to  Pearson  written  at  the  same  date, 

'  and  give  dearest  Arthur  your  best  advice  about  his  work. 
I  am  so  very  anxious  that  he  should  do  something  perma- 
nent. I  think  it  would  be  good  for  him  in  every  way, 
and  "  the  day  is  far  spent "  for  us  all.  But  yet  there  is 
all  the  power  of  work  in  him,  if  he  only  gets  a  quiet 
start.' 

Pearson's  counsel  was  to  continue  the  '  History  of  the 
Jewish  Church,'  and  the  advice  was  adopted.  But  before 
he  began  the  projected  work  he  left  Westminster  for  his 
annual  holiday.  After  a  few  weeks  in  Scotland  he  went 
abroad,  mainly  with  the  object  of  attending  the  Congress 
of  Old  Catholics  at  Cologne. 

On  September  20th,  1872,  the  Congress  of  Old  Catholics 
opened  at  Cologne,  under  the  presidency  of  Dr.  Schultze, 
the  distinguished  Professor  of  Canon  Law  at  Prague.  The 
movement  was  one  with  which  Stanley  strongly  sympa- 
thised. Its  very  vagueness  was,  in  his  eyes,  a  merit.  It 
is  possible  that,  had  the  Old  Catholics  openly  broken  with 
the  Roman  Church,  and  adopted  Luther's  rough-and-ready 
policy  of  war  to  the  knife,  they  would  have  pursued  a  more 
practicable  and  successful  course.  But  it  was  their  refusal 
to  add  another  to  the  schisms  by  which  Christendom  was 
divided  which  enlisted  Stanley's  sympathy.  In  his  view, 
the  movement  represented  a  transitional  phase  of  thought, 
and  was  the  outcome  of  the  blending  of  popular  and  sci- 
entific enthusiasms,  which  hitherto  had  not  been  fused 
together.  It  was  necessarily  tentative,  because  it  was 
an  attempt  at  an  historical  revision  of  theology,  and  an 
endeavour  to  distinguish  the  permanent  from  the  tempo- 
rary elements  of  Christianity.    It  was  avowedly  still  on 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


the  road,  and  had  not  yet  reached  its  goal.  Its  leaders 
were  inspired  by  no  desire  to  form  a  sect ;  they  did  not 
•  even  repudiate  the  great  Church  whose  integrity  of  doc- 
trine it  was  their  professed  object  to  maintain.  The  union 
of  the  Churches  which  they  contemplated  was  not  to  be 
effected  by  proselytism  or  by  absorption.  It  was  rather 
to  be  brought  about  by  developing  whatever  germs  of 
goodness  and  truth  were  to  be  found  in  rival  communions, 
and  by  the  brotherly  recognition  of  each  as  fulfilling  its 
own  mission  and  working  out  its  own  idea. 

When,  therefore,  Stanley  was  invited  to  be  present  at 
the  Congress,  he  accepted  the  invitation  in  a  letter  which 
was  published  in  the  'Times.'  ^'^  In  the  Congress  itself  he 
took  no  active  part,  beyond  attending  the  meeting  and 
describing  the  discussions  in  two  letters  to  the  '  Times ' 
from  'An  Occasional  Correspondent.'"  'It  would,'  he 
says  to  M.  de  Circourt, 

'  have  been  difficult  to  do  more,  on  account  of  the  imper- 
fection of  my  German.  But  it  was  also  unnecessary,  for 
almost  every  sentiment  that  I  could  have  wished  to  utter 
was  expressed  in  the  most  powerful  manner  by  Professor 
Reinkens.  The  only  criticism  which  I  could  make  was, 
that  there  was  too  hard  a  tone  adopted  towards  the  Roman 
Church  —  not  a  sufficient  appreciation  of  its  position  in 
the  history  of  Europe.' 

One  of  the  probable  questions  at  the  Congress  was  the 
celibacy  of  the  clergy.  To  the  decision  of  the  Old  Catho- 
lics on  this  point  a  new  interest  was  attached  by  the 
recent  marriage  of  Pere  Hyacinthe  Loyson  to  an  Ameri- 
can lady  whom  he  had  converted  to  Roman  Catholicism.^ 

1"  The  Times,  September  19th,  1872. 

11  The  Times,  September  27th  and  October  2nd,  1872. 

12  M.  Hyacinthe  Loyson  was  himself  present  at  the  Conference.  But  it  was 
at  first  doubtful  whether  celibacy  would  be  discussed.  '  An  unexpected  ally,' 
writes  Stanley, 

'  appeared  in  the  person  of  Wordsworth,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  who,  though  an 
extremely  rigid  High  Churchman,  and  with  hardly  any  personal  knowledge  of 


CHAP.  XXV      OLD  CATHOLIC  COATGRESS,  1872  411 


During  the  Franco-Prussian  War  Pere  Hyacinthe  had  been 
much  in  England,  and  a  frequent  guest  at  the  Deanery. 
The  intercourse  had  been  renewed  at  Rome  in  the  autumn 
of  1 87 1.  Stanley  had  learned  to  respect  most  highly  the 
character  of  his  friend,  and  though  his  confidence  in  Pere 
Hyacinthe  was  unshaken,  the  news  of  his  approaching 
marriage  caused  him  'profound  anxiety.'  So  great  was  his 
annoyance  that,  as  he  says  himself,  it  made  him  positively 
ill.  'Although,'  he  writes  to  M.  de  Circourt  in  September 
1872, 

'I  had  for  some  time  anticipated  the  possibility  of  such  an 
event,  I  did  not  know  of  his  fixed  decision  till  just  before 
leaving  London  for  Scotland  in  August  last. 

'  I  could  have  desired  that  the  step  should  be  deferred 
till  a  more  general  movement  could  divest  it  of  the  personal 
character  which,  taken  by  itself,  it  was  likely  to  assume. 
But  there  were  many  reasons  which  led  Hyacinthe  to  an 
opposite  conclusion :  The  distress  of  prolonged  suspense, 
the  desire  of  placing  before  the  world  by  a  public  act  his 
protest  against  the  present  system  of  the  Roman  Church, 
and  the  feeling  that  it  was  more  honourable  to  do  this  in 
anticipation  of  the  Congress  at  Cologne. 

'  The  resolution  once  adopted,  the  mode  and  place  were 
dictated  by  considerations  which  appeared  to  me  convinc- 
ing. Being  both  Catholics,  and  wishing  to  avoid  the  sup- 
position that  they  had  become  Protestants,  the  marriage 
could  not  take  place  in  a  Protestant  church.  In  a  Catholic 
church  it  would  have  been  difificult,  if  not  impossible. 
There  remained,  therefore,  the  alternative  of  a  civil  mar- 
riage, which  could  more  easily  take  place  in  England  than 
elsewhere.  I  was  present  as  a  friend,  but  not  as  taking 
any  part  in  the  ceremony.' 

At  such  a  crisis  Pere  Hyacinthe  more  than  ever  needed 
a  friend,  and  Stanley  stood  by  him  both  in  private  and  pub- 

Hyacinthe,  wrote  a  powerful  Latin  letter  on  his  behalf,  entreating  them  to 
take  up  the  whole  question  of  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy.  At  the  last  meeting, 
when  the  final  and  most  stirring  addresses  were  made  to  the  assembly,  and 
the  programme  of  the  future  reforms  were  set  forth,  the  marriage  of  the  clergy 
was  announced  in  the  most  distinct  terms  as  one  of  the  most  necessary 
changes.' 


412 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


lie.  He  well  knew  that,  as  Pere  Hyacinthe  himself  antici- 
pated, the  marriage  would  be  the  signal  for  a  general  outcry. 
'"II  voulait  se  marier,"  s'ecriera-t-on  de  toutes  parts,  "il 
n'a  pas  eu  le  courage  de  le  dire.  II  a  parle  de  I'infaillibi- 
lite,  et  ce  n'^tait  qu'un  pretexte.  Ce  beau  drame  finit  par 
une  comedie."  '  The  moment  was  one  which  Stanley  chose 
to  emphasise  his  unshaken  confidence  in  Pere  Hyacinthe, 
not  only  by  his  presence  at  his  marriage  on  September  3rd, 
1872,  but  by  letters  to  his  relations  and  friends.  '  Hya- 
cinthe's  marriage,'  he  writes  to  his  sister  Mary, 

'  is  too  long  an  affair  to  enter  upon.  Of  course,  he  and  she 
both  being  Catholics,  it  was  an  object  to  them  not  to  be 
married  in  a  Protestant  church,  which  would  immediately 
have  given  rise  to  the  notion  that  they  were  Protestants. 
Therefore  they  were  not  married  by  a  Protestant  clergy- 
man, nor  in  a  Protestant  church. 

'  So  far  from  being  rich,  she  is  very  poor  —  so  poor  that 
his  one  anxiety  is,  how  they  will  maintain  themselves  at  all. 

'  All  the  objections  in  point  of  prudence,  &c.,  are  obvious 
enough,  and  he  knew  that  whatever  influence  he  still  retained 
would  be  endangered  by  this  course.  But  he  is  so  much 
above  such  considerations  (as,  in  fact,  he  showed  in  the 
first  instance  by  sacrificing  the  greatest  position  in  the 
French  Church,  as  preacher  at  Notre  Dame)  that,  although 
it  adds  to  the  difficulty  of  the  situation,  I  do  not  think  that 
it  is  so  great  an  annoyance  to  him  as  to  his  friends. 

'  He  certainly  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  elevated 
characters  I  ever  saw,  and  it  is  a  little  trying  to  me  to  see 
how  people  turn  their  backs  upon  him,  and  run  after  a  man 

like  Monsignor  .    However,  this  is  the  way  of  the 

world.' 

Immediately  after  Pere  Hyacinthe's  marriage  Stanley 
left  England  to  proceed  by  easy  stages  to  Cologne.  The 
Congress  lasted  three  days,  and  as  soon  as  it  broke  up  he 
set  out  for  Geneva.  On  his  way  he  was  delayed  at  Baden 
by  the  death  of  Princess  Hohenlohe,  at  whose  funeral  Lady 
Augusta,  at  the  Queen's  request,  represented  Her  Majesty. 


I 

CHAP.  XXV  MERLE  D'AUBIGNE  413 


The  German  Emperor and  Empress^*  were  at  the  same 
time  staying  at  Baden. 

'The  last  night  that  we  were  there  the  Empress  sent  for 
us  to  take  leave.  She  was  quite  alone.  After  talking  for 
some  minutes,  she  said,  "The  Emperor  wishes  much  to  see 
you,"  and  presently  the  door  opened,  and  in  he  walked. 
We  had  not  seen  him  since  1869.  I  said  to  him,  "It  is 
three  years  since  I  have  had  the  honour  of  seeing  your 
Majesty,  but  it  seems  to  be  three  centuries."  It  was  ex- 
tremely interesting,  I  must  say,  to  be  with  the  author  of 
those  famous  telegrams,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  very 
Augusta  who  received  them. 

'  He  spoke  most  naturally  and  kindly  about  England, 
and  then,  when  we  told  him  that  we  had  been  over  the 
battle-fields  last  year,  he  said,  with  much  feeling  "  Battle- 
fields ought  not  to  be  seen  till  they  have  ceased  to  be  fields 
of  battle.  Terrible  were  the  scenes  we  had  to  traverse. 
That  is  the  reverse  of  the  medal.  But  when  war  is  once 
lighted,  one  must  follow  it  to  the  end.  And  when  one  is 
in  the  right,  there  is  an  Ally  on  high,  without  Whose  help 
nothing  can  be  done.  It  is  to  this  that  we  owed  our 
wonderful  successes,  the  devotion  of  our  soldiers,  the 
enthusiasm  of  our  people."  ' 

At  Geneva,  only  ten  days  before  the  historian's  death, 
he  had  several  interviews  with  Merle  d'Aubign^,  whom 
Dr.  Tait  and  he  had  visited  in  1840.  '  Probably,'  he  writes 
to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  on  October  21st,  1872, 

'  I  was  the  last  Englishman  whom  he  saw.  He  was  in 
his  usual  health  and  vigour,  though  in  his  seventy-eighth 
year,  and  we  conversed,  both  in  this  and  in  a  previous 
interview,  on  the  state  of  Christendom  and  the  history  of 
the  Reformation.  He  had  been  much  occupied  in  writing 
an  address  to  the  Old  Catholics,  of  whom  he  spoke  with 
sincere  interest.  He  also  spoke  with  profound  veneration 
and  regard  of  Mr.  Erskine  of  Linlathen,  whom  he  had 
known  well  in  former  years.  The  discussion  about  the 
Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  had  been  a  matter  which 
naturally  excited  his  old  ardour,  and  he  described  how,  in  a 


18  Kaiser  VVilhelm  I. 


The  Empress  Augusta. 


414 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1872 


journey  to  Rome  many  years  ago,  he  had  been  the  means 
of  procuring  an  impression  of  the  Papal  Medal,  of  which 
the  existence  has  been  now  attempted  to  be  denied.  On 
that  visit  he  had  an  introduction  to  Gerbert  (afterwards 
Archbishop  of  Perpignan),  who,  not  knowing  who  he  was, 
enlarged  to  him  on  the  advantages  which  the  Church  of 
Rome  enjoyed  in  possessing  the  bones  of  St.  Paul.  "  But," 
said  Merle,  "  we  pride  ourselves  on  the  possession  and  con- 
stant enjoyment  of  some  much  more  valuable  relics  of  St. 
Paul."  "What  are  they.''"  said  Gerbert,  with  great  curi- 
osity. "He  wrote  a  number  of  letters,"  said  Merle,  "and 
these  we  constantly  read." 

'  I  give  you  these  details  to  show  you  how  lively  the 
good  old  man  was  to  the  end. 

'  It  is  sad  to  think  of  his  wife  and  children,  who  seemed 
so  especially  happy  with  him.  I  have  a  charming  note 
from  him,  which  I  shall  much  value,  as  among  the  last  he 
wrote.  Of  you  he  spoke  with  his  usual  interest.  His  loss 
will  be  much  felt  in  Geneva,  where  he  seemed  to  be  a  kind 
of  living  link  with  Calvin.' 

A  letter  written  from  Macon  to  his  cousin,  Louisa 
Stanley,  at  the  end  of  October  describes  Annecy,  the 
birthplace  of  St.  Francois  de  Sales,  the  ruined  Abbey  of 
Cluny,  and  the  Church  of  Brou,  near  Bourg-en-Bresse, 
which,  though  'a  Brou  unvisited,'  has  been  immortalised 
by  Matthew  Arnold.  But  the  most  interesting  passage  is 
one  which  illustrates  his  constant  love  for  his  old  home  at 
Alderley.    '  You  know,'  he  says, 

'  that  this  is  the  birthplace  of  Lamartine.  I  forget  whether 
you  shared  my  temporary  enthusiasm  about  him,  and 
which  I  still  think  was  in  some  degree  merited,  when  he 
was  in  power  in  1848.  I  found  some  verses  of  his  about 
his  own  neighbourhood  here  which  seem  to  me,  in  spite  of 
his  sentimentalism,  to  be  really  true  ;  at  least,  I  always 
feel  it  in  thinking  of  Alderley.  Next  to  the  great  and 
famous  places  I  have  seen,  or,  rather,  on  a  level  with  them, 
though  a  level  of  another  kind,  seem  to  me  to  stand  out 
from  all  the  past  the  rectory,  the  church,  the  village,  the 
mill,  the  beech-wood,  the  park,  the  mere. 


CHAP.  XXV  PROFESSOR  SEDGWICK 


C'est  la  que  c'est  mon  cceur ; 

Ce  sont  la  les  s^jours,  les  sites,  les  rivages, 

Dont  mon  ame  attendrie  ^voque  les  images, 

Et  dont,  pendant  les  nuits,  mes  songes  les  plus  beaux 

Pour  enchanter  mes  yeux  composent  leurs  tableaux ; 

La,  mon  coeur  en  tout  lieu  se  retrouve  lui-meme, 

Tout  s'y  souvient  de  moi,  tout  m'y  connait,  tout  m'aime ; 

Mon  ceil  trouve  un  ami  dans  tout  cet  horizon ; 

Chaque  arbre  a  son  histoire,  et  chaque  pierre  un  nom, 

Ce  site  ou  la  pens^e  a  rattach^  sa  trame, 

Ces  lieux  encore  pleins  des  fastes  de  mon  ame, 

Sont  aussi  grands  pour  moi  que  ces  champs  du  destin, 

Oil  naquit  ou  tomba  quelque  empire  incertain.' 

The  year  1873  was  marked  by  the  death  of  several  of 
Stanley's  oldest  friends  —  Dr.  Lushington,  Professor  Sedg- 
wick, Bishop  Wilberforce,  Mrs.  Arnold,  and  Sir  Henry 
Holland.  At  the  funeral  of  Dr.  Lushington,  whose  fatal 
illness  was  attributed  to  a  chill  which  he  caught  in  travelling 
to  Oxford  to  vote  for  Stanley  as  Select  Preacher,  Stanley 
himself  officiated.  A  few  days  later  Professor  Sedgwick  — 
the  '  dear  old  Sedgy  '  of  Oxford  letters  —  died  at  Cambridge. 
'  What  a  world  of  recollections  will  be  buried  with  him  ! ' 
writes  Stanley  to  his  sister  of  their  old  friend  and  neigh- 
bour at  Norwich.  As  Select  Preacher  at  Cambridge,  it  fell 
to  Stanley's  lot  to  preach  in  the  University  Church  on  the 
Sunday  following  the  Professor's  death  (February  2nd, 
1873).  The  sermon  is  one  of  the  finest  of  his  oraisons 
fiinkbres.  '  Your  noble  and  very  just  tribute  to  the  memory 
of  Professor  Sedgwick,'  wrote  the  Vice-Chancellor  to  him, 
*  is  one  which  the  University  would  not  willingly  let  die, 
and  I  hope,  therefore,  that  you  will  consent  to  publish  the 
sermon  which  you  preached  to-day.' 

Personally,  Stanley  had  always  maintained  the  most 
friendly  relations  with  Bishop  Wilberforce.    It  was  said  by 

1^  Reprinted  in  Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 


4i6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


one  who  was  well  known  to  both,  that  they  had  agreed  to 
love  each  other  in  private,  and  to  do  each  other  as  much 
mischief  as  possible  in  public.  The  Bishop's  death,i^  as 
Stanley  felt,  robbed  the  Church  of  its  romance.  '  It  shakes 
me  to  the  centre,'  he  says  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to 
the  spot  where  the  fatal  accident  had  occurred.  Almost 
simultaneously  Lord  Westbury  died.  '  How  are  the 
mighty  fallen ! '  is  the  text  from  which  Stanley  preached 
in  Westminster  Abbey  on  the  death  of  two  of  the  most 
distinguished  men  in  their  generation.  '  I  have  read,' writes 
a  judicious  friend  of  Stanley's, 

'your  elegies  on  Westbury  and  Wilberforce  with  great 
satisfaction.  It  was  a  difficult  task  in  both  cases.  But 
nothing  can  be  more  just  and  true  than  the  judgments  you 
have  delivered.  They  have  both  left  nihil  simile  ant 
secimdiim  in  their  respective  provinces.  Yet  in  pronounc- 
ing these  funeral  orations  how  much  must  remain  unsaid. 
What  might  Westbury  have  not  done  in  reforming  the 
law,  had  he  seriously  devoted  himself  to  the  task  What 
might  Wilberforce  have  done  in  the  Church  of  England, 
if  he  had  seriously  attempted  to  lead  the  clergy,  instead 
of  being  led  by  them  As  it  is,  how  much  will  be  heard 
of  them  in  fifty  —  nay,  in  twenty-five  years  .''  Their  fame 
is,  and  will  be,  like  that  of  a  great  actor,  whom  those  that 
have  seen  and  heard  praise,  as  eclipsing  all  that  they  have 
known,  but  who  cannot  transmit  the  grace  and  force  of 
his  action  to  those  who  have  neither  seen  nor  heard. 

'How  different  the  man  was  whom  you  commemorated 
a  year  and  a  half  ago  —  Grote !  With  natural  powers,  I 
suppose,  much  inferior  to  both  of  them,  how  will  his  seri- 
ous and  devoted  life  perpetuate  his  name  as  long  as  men 
care  to  hear  and  read  of  Athens  and  Greece.' 

A  brief  autumn  holiday,  mainly  spent  at  Monte  Gene- 
roso,  was  shortened  in  order  that  he  and  his  wife  might 
the  more  easily  obey  a  request  which  the  Queen  had  made 
to  them.  'Though,'  wrote  Her  Majesty  to  Lady  Augusta 
on  August  8th,  1873, 

16  July  1873. 


CHAP.  XXV.  APP.         STANLEY'S  HYMNS 


'  I  shall  see  you  to-morrow,  I  wish  to  prepare  you  for 
what  not  only  I,  but  Alfred  and  others  (including  the 
Dean  of  Windsor  and  Lord  Granville)  are  very  anxious 
for.  It  is,  that  I  am  very  desirous  that  your  Dean  should 
perform  the  English  ceremony  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  that 
you  should  attend  as  one  of  my  ladies.  You  travel  so  much, 
and  dread  cold  so  little,  that,  as  in  January  the  Russian 
climate  is  said  to  be  healthy,  I  hope  you  may  be  able  to 
undertake  a  mission  which  will  require  great  discretion, 
and  which  will  be  a  comfort  to  me.  But  you  must  fully 
consider  whether  you  can  manage  it,  and  that  is  why  I 
have  thought  it  best  to  write  before  I  see  you  both.' 


Appendix  to  Chapter  XXV. 

Stanley's  Hymns. 

I.  Hymn  for  Good  Friday. 

Where  shall  we  learn  to  die  ? 

Go,  gaze  with  steadfast  eye 

On  dark  Gethsemane, 

Or  darker  Calvary, 

Where,  thro'  each  lingering  hour. 

The  Lord  of  grace  and  power. 

Most  lowly  and  most  High, 

Has  taught  the  Christian  how  to  die. 

When  in  the  olive  shade 
His  long  last  prayer  He  prayed  ; 
When  on  the  Cross  to  Heaven 
His  parting  spirit  was  given, 
He  showed  that  to  fulfil 
The  Father's  gracious  will. 
Not  asking  how  or  why. 
Alone  prepares  the  soul  to  die. 

No  word  of  angry  strife, 
No  anxious  cry  for  life  : 
By  scoff  and  torture  torn, 
He  speaks  not  scorn  for  scorn ; 


VOL.  II 


4i8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Calmly  forgiving  those 

Who  deem  themselves  His  foes, 

In  silent  majesty 

He  points  the  way  at  peace  to  die. 

Delighting  to  the  last 

In  memories  of  the  past ; 

Glad  at  the  parting  meal 

In  lowly  tasks  to  kneel  ; 

Still  yearning  to  the  end 

For  mother  and  for  friend  ; 

His  great  humility 

Loves  in  such  acts  of  love  to  die. 

Beyond  His  depth  of  woes 
A  wider  thought  arose, 
Along  His  path  of  gloom 
Thought  for  His  country's  doom, 
Athwart  all  pain  and  grief 
Thought  for  the  contrite  thief : 
The  far-stretched  sympathy 
Lives  on  when  all  beside  shall  die. 

Bereft,  but  not  alone, 

The  world  is  still  His  own  ; 

The  realm  of  deathless  truth 

Still  breathes  immortal  youth  ; 

Sure,  though  in  shudd'ring  dread 

That  all  is  finished. 

With  purpose  fixed  and  high. 

The  Friend  of  all  Mankind  must  die. 

Oh  !  by  those  weary  hours 

Of  slowly-ebbing  powers. 

By  those  deep  lessons  heard 

In  each  expiring  word  ; 

By  that  unfailing  love 

Lifting  the  soul  above, 

When  our  last  end  is  nigh, 

So  teach  us,  Lord,  with  Thee  to  die. 


CHAP.  XXV.  API'. 


STANLEY'S  HYMNS 


419 


2.  Hymn  for  Ascension  Day. 

He  is  gone  —  beyond  the  skies, 
A  cloud  receives  Him  from  our  eyes; 
Gone  beyond  the  highest  height 
Of  mortal  gaze  or  angel's  flight ; 
Through  the  veils  of  Time  and  Space, 
Passed  into  the  Holiest  Place ; 
All  the  toil,  the  sorrow  done, 
All  the  battle  fought  and  won. 

He  is  gone  —  and  we  return. 
And  our  hearts  within  us  burn ; 
Olivet  no  more  shall  greet 
With  welcome  shout  His  coming  feet ; 
Never  shall  we  track  Him  more 
On  Gennesareth's  glistening  shore  ; 
Never  in  that  look  or  voice 
Shall  Zion's  hill  again  rejoice. 

He  is  gone  —  and  we  remain 
In  this  world  of  sin  and  pain  ; 
In  the  void  which  He  has  left. 
On  this  earth  of  Him  bereft, 
AVe  have  still  His  work  to  do, 
We  can  still  His  path  pursue  ; 
Seek  Him  both  in  friend  and  foe. 
In  ourselves  His  image  show. 

He  is  gone  —  we  heard  Him  say, 
'Good  that  I  should  go  away.' 
Gone  is  that  dear  Form  and  Face, 
But  not  gone  His  present  grace  ; 
Though  Himself  no  more  we  see. 
Comfortless  we  cannot  be  : 
No,  His  spirit  still  is  ours. 
Quickening,  freshening  all  our  powers. 

He  is  gone  —  towards  their  goal, 
World  and  Church  must  onwards  roll : 


K  K  2 


420 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Far  behind  we  leave  the  past ; 
Forwards  are  our  glances  cast : 
Still  His  words  before  us  range 
Through  the  ages,  as  they  change  : 
Wheresoe'er  the  Truth  shall  lead, 
He  will  give  whate'er  we  need. 

He  is  gone  —  but  we  once  more 
Shall  behold  Him  as  before ; 
In  the  Heaven  of  Heavens  the  same 
As  on  earth  He  went  and  came. 
In  the  many  mansions  there, 
Place  for  us  will  He  prepare  : 
In  that  world,  unseen,  unknown, 
He  and  we  may  yet  be  one. 

He  is  gone  —  but,  not  in  vain  ; 
Wait,  until  He  comes  again  ; 
He  is  risen,  He  is  not  here. 
Far  above  this  earthly  sphere  ; 
Evermore  in  heart  and  mind, 
Where  our  peace  in  Him  we  find 
To  our  own  Eternal  Friend, 
Thitherward  let  us  ascend. 


3.  Hymn  on  the  Transfiguraiion. 

*  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 

High  on  the  mountain  here  with  Thee  : ' 

Here,  in  an  ampler,  purer  air, 

Above  the  stir  of  toil  and  care. 

Of  hearts  distraught  with  doubt  and  grief, 

Believing  in  their  unbelief, 

Calling  Thy  servants,  all  in  vain. 

To  ease  them  of  their  bitter  pain. 

'  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 
Where  rest  the  souls  that  talk  with  Thee  : ' 
Where  stand  revealed  to  mortal  gaze 
The  great  old  saints  of  other  days ; 


CHAP.  XXV.  APP.         STANLEY'S  HYMNS 


421 


Who  once  received  on  Horeb's  height 
The  eternal  laws  of  truth  and  right ; 
Or  caught  the  still  small  whisper,  higher 
Than  storm,  than  earthquake,  or  than  fire. 

*  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 

With  Thee,  and  with  Thy  faithful  Three  ; ' 

Here,  where  the  Aposde's  heart  of  rock 

Is  nerved  against  temptation's  shock ; 

Here,  where  the  Son  of  Thunder  learns 

'  The  thought  that  breathes  and  word  that  bums ; ' 

Here,  where  on  eagle's  wings  we  move 

With  Him  Whose  last  best  creed  is  Love. 

'  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 

Entranced  enwrapt,  alone  with  Thee  ; ' 

Watching  the  glistering  raiment  glow, 

Whiter  than  Harmon's  whitest  snow ; 

The  human  lineaments  that  shine 

Irradiant  with  a  light  Divine  : 

Still  we,  too,  change  from  grace  to  grace, 

Gazing  on  that  transfigured  Face. 

'  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 
In  life's  worst  anguish  close  to  Thee  : ' 
Within  the  overshadowing  cloud 
Which  wraps  us  in  its  awful  shroud, 
We  wist  not  what  to  think  or  say, 
Our  spirits  sink  in  sore  dismay ; 
They  tell  us  of  the  dread  '  Decease  ' : 
But  yet  to  linger  here  is  peace. 

'  Master,  it  is  good  to  be 
Here  on  the  Holy  Mount  with  Thee  : ' 
When  darkling  in  the  depths  of  night. 
When  dazzled  with  excess  of  light. 
We  bow  before  the  heavenly  Voice 
That  bids  bewildered  souls  rejoice. 
Though  love  wax  cold,  and  faith  be  dim, 
'  This  is  My  Son  ;  O  hear  ye  Him.' 


422 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
1874-76 

THE  WEDDING  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  EDINBURGH  AT  ST.  PETERS- 
BURG—STANLEY'S PART  IN  THE  CEREMONY  — HIS  RECEP- 
TION IN  RUSSIA  — LORD  BEACONSFIELD  AT  MARLBOROUGH 
HOUSE  AND  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  — THE  PERSECUTED  RUS- 
SIAN BAPTISTS— STANLEY  AND  MRS.  ANNIE  BE.SANT— LADY 
AUGUSTA  STANLEY'S  ILLNESS  AT  PARIS  — STANLEY'S  AD- 
DRESSES AS  LORD  RECTOR  OF  ST.  ANDREWS— THE  ALARM- 
ING STATE  OF  HIS  WIFE'S  HEALTH  —  FLUCTUATIONS  OF 
HOPE  AND  FEAR  — HER  DEATH  ON  MARCH  ist,  1876 

On  January  9th,  1874,  Stanley  and  his  wife  left  England 
for  St.  Petersburg.  To  Lady  Augusta's  special  care  the 
Queen  consigned  two  gifts.  '  I  address,'  writes  Her  Majesty 
in  January  1874, 

'  this  letter  to  St.  Petersburg,  with  two  parcels,  which  re- 
quire explanation,  and  which  are  entrusted  to  your  special 
care.  The  one  contains  two  sprigs  of  myrtle,  which  I  ask 
you  to  put  at  once  into  a  little  warm  water,  and  to  keep  to 
the  afternoon  of  the  22nd,  to  be  placed  in  the  middle  of  a 
bouquet  of  white  flowers,  which  I  shall  ask  you  to  order 
and  give  from  me  to  Marie  before  the  English  wedding, 
with  this  explanation,  viz.  that  this  myrtle  comes  from  a 
large  healthy  plant  here  which  has  grown  from  a  little  bit 
of  myrtle  much  smaller  than  these  sprigs  which  was  in  the 
Princess  Royal's  nosegay,  and  which  all  the  brides  (I  think) 
have  had  a  piece  of  in  succession.  The  second  box  con- 
tains two  Prayer-books :  the  one  in  white,  with  an  illu- 
mination of  some  verses,  which  I  had  painted  on  purpose, 
is  for  the  Grand  Duchess  ;  and  the  other  plain  one  is  for 
Alfred  —  botli  to  be  given  them  on  their  wedding-day  and 
for  the  English  wedding.     My  dear  mother  gave  my 


CHAP.  XXVI 


JOURNEY  TO  RUSSIA 


423 


beloved  husband  and  me  Prayer-books,  which  I  now  have, 
and  often  use,  especially  the  dear  Prince's.' 

The  detailed  narrative  of  all  that  the  travellers  saw  and 
heard  is  told  in  a  series  of  letters  to  his  sister  Mary. 

'  Palace,  Berlin  :  January  12th,  1874. 

'  Safe  here  without  a  single  drawback.  The  moment  we 
touched  the  shores  of  Calais  began  the  change  from  ordi- 
nary travelling.  The  Consul  and  Vice-Consul  appeared 
on  board,  took  us  instantly  into  a  private  room  in  the 
station,  and  placed  us  in  a  coupe,  in  which  we  remained, 
unchanged  and  uninvaded,  the  whole  way  to  Cologne,  which 
we  reached  at  1 1  p.m.,  and  found  our  rooms  all  ready  at  the 
Hotel  du  Nord  —  the  same  we  had  at  the  old  Catholic 
Congress. 

'Started  at  9.30  next  day  —  one  compartment  to  our- 
selves, another  for  the  servant.  Dined  at  Minden,  and  at 
7.30  reached  Berlin.  At  the  station  was  Lord  Odo  Russell, 
in  his  fur  cloak,  with  all  necessary  indications,  and  the 
royal  carriages  waiting  to  receive  us  and  bear  us  away  to 
the  Palace. 

'  It  is  the  old  palace  of  the  Electors  and  Kings,  not  that 
inhabited  by  the  Emperor.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
anything  more  splendidly  comfortable.  A  whole  suite  of 
rooms,  all  warmed,  and  with  blazing  fires  —  real  open  fire- 
places. They  are  the  rooms  which  the  First  Napoleon 
occupied  on  his  invasion  of  Berlin.  We  had  hardly  sat 
down  to  dinner,  which  was  already  prepared,  in  our  travel- 
ling dresses,  just  as  we  were,  when  the  Crown  Princess 
was  announced.  She  sat  with  us  while  we  dined,  and 
arranged  for  me  to  preach  in  the  chapel  in  her  palace  next 
day  at  9.30  a.m. 

'Accordingly  we  went.  It  is  a  very  small  chapel.  No 
one  there  but  the  Crown  Prince  and  Princess,  the  children 
and  governesses.  I  preached  on  the  Gospel  of  the  day. 
Then  to  the  German  cathedral,  where  we  heard  a  not  very 
interesting  sermon  from  Hengstenberg,  brother  of  the 
famous  Hengstenberg. 

'  We  dined  with  the  Crown  Prince  and  Princess  —  no  one 
but  ourselves  and  the  children  (5  p.m.)  ;  excellent,  well- 
behaved  children,  remembering  perfectly  their  visit  to  the 
Abbey  and  Deanery,  and  our  visit  to  Potsdam.    The  Crown 


424 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Prince  showed  us  his  room,  all  filled  with  pictures  by  the 
Princess,  except  one  of  Ben  Nevis  given  him  by  the  Prince 
Consort. 

'Monday,  went  over  the  Palace  here  —  very  interesting 
portraits  of  the  old  Prussian  family.  Then  to  the  Thier- 
garten,  to  meet  all  the  members  of  the  Royal  Family, 
skating.  Imagine  the  energy  of  the  Prince  and  Princess 
of  Wales  after  their  long  journey  of  two  nights  and  a  day 
—  skating  away  all  the  afternoon  !  At  6  p.m.  dinner  at  the 
Palace  —  exceedingly  magnificent.  The  Emperor,  though 
recovering,  did  not  appear.  But  the  Empress,  the  Crown 
Prince  and  Princess  ;  Prince  Charles  (Emperor's  brother), 
and  his  wife  and  his  son  ;  Prince  Frederick  Charles,  the 
great  general  and  conqueror  of  Metz,  and  his  daughter, 
Princess  Marie  (whom  I  took  in  to  dinner)  ;  the  Prince  and 
Princess  of  Wales,  Prince  Arthur,  and  all  their  suite ;  the 
Odo  Russells,  Moltke,  and  Bismarck,  were  present.  He 
(Bismarck)  came  among  the  last  —  a  giant  amongst  them 
all  in  look  and  stature.  He  stalked  across  the  room  to 
Lord  Odo  and  the  Danish  Minister,  and  begged  to  be 
introduced  to  me.  I  had  but  a  few  minutes'  conversation 
with  him,  but  enough  to  let  me  see  his  countenance,  and 
hear  his  manner  of  speaking  —  much  more  gracious  and 
familiar  than  I  had  expected,  and  exceedingly  pleasant  in 
his  tone  on  the  marriage.  "It  is  very  important  that  the 
two  countries  which  zve  regard  as  friends  to  tis  should  be 
friends  to  one  another.  War  is  a  wild  teacher,  and  any- 
thing which  helps  to  keep  him  off  is  so  much  clear  gain." 
I  sat  between  the  Crown  Princess  and  Princess  Marie  — 
she  is  a  very  simple,  innocent,  pleasing  girl. 

'The  Crown  Princess  is  always  very  interesting.  She 
had  had,  she  said,  the  greatest  difficulty  in  persuading  the 
people  in  the  Palace  that  "the  Bishop"  (as  they  insist  on 
calling  me)  and  Augusta  were  not  two  independent  person- 
ages, to  be  put  in  rooms  far  apart.' 

'The  Russian  Epiphany:  Winter  Palace,  St.  Petersburg. 

'  On  Tuesday  we  went  over  the  Museum  with  the 
Usedoms.  In  the  afternoon  with  the  Empress,  to  see  two 
charitable  institutions  of  hers.  In  the  evening,  dinner 
with  the  Crown  Prince.  The  Prince  of  Wales's  party 
there,  after  a  boar-hunt,  in  which  80  boars  were  killed  — 
and  in  their  travelling  dresses,  to  start  that  night.  After 


CHAP.  XXVI  JOURNEY  TO  RUSSIA 


425 


the  dinner  we  went  to  a  party  at  Professor  Helmholtz's, 
the  first  scientific  man  in  Berlin,  and  met  there  various 
distinguished  scientific  men. 

'  Wednesday.  At  5  p.m.  we  dined  quite  alone  with  the 
Crown  Princess  and  the  children  ;  then  to  Prince  Bismarck's, 
almost  on  the  way  to  the  station.  Princess  Bismarck  was 
exceedingly  gracious,  and  received  us  at  once  to  tea  with 
her  daughter.  When  she  found  that  we  were  going  that 
night  she  sent  in  to  her  husband,  and  he  came  out  and 
sat  with  us  till  we  went.  I  couldn't  find  an  opportunity 
of  entering  on  the  great  ecclesiastical  question,  but  we 
talked  in  a  perfectly  easy  manner  on  England  and  Shake- 
speare ;  and  in  order  to  explain  why  he  had  never  taken 
the  Embas.sy  in  England,  he  gave  a  most  elaborate  and  • 
accurate  account  of  the  inconveniences  of  the  house  in 
Carlton  Terrace,  which  at  once  determined  him  never  to 
undertake  the  post  in  England  unless  the  house  was  sold. 
He  gave  us  a  very  cordial  invitation  to  see  him  on  our 
return,  and  altogether  left  the  impression  of  a  far  more 
amiable  and  gracious  exterior  and  interior  than  I  had  been 
led  to  expect. 

'At  II  P.M.  we  started  for  St.  Petersburg.  We  had  one 
large  compartment  with  a  stove,  and  not  exactly  beds,  but 
long  sofas,  and  so  got  through  the  night  tolerably  well. 

'  When  day  broke  we  were  on  the  Great  Northern  Plain 
of  Germany.  A  bright  sun,  and  snow  on  the  ground.  At 
12  we  reached  Konigsberg,  the  ancient  capital  of  Prussia. 
There  we  were  met  by  the  French  and  English  Consuls, 
and  at  once  conducted  into  an  inner  room  for  breakfast. 
At  about  4  P.M.  we  reached  the  Russian  frontier.  Instantly 
a  Feld  Jager,  despatched  from  St.  Petersburg,  took  us 
out.  All  the  officials  were  at  our  disposal.  We  had  an 
excellent  dinner,  in  excellent  rooms,  and  started  again  in 
far  superior  carriages.  Two  large  compartments  —  one  for 
ourselves,  one  for  the  servants  ;  a  stove,  and  every  sort  of 
convenience,  and  at  every  halt  tea  brought  into  the 
carriages.  The  next  day  broke  on  a  snowy  landscape, 
about  7  A.M.  It  was  very  interesting  to  see  the  first 
Russian  church,  with  its  fine  cupolas,  the  first  sledge, 
the  first  wooden  village.  The  only  place  of  interest  we 
passed  was  Pskof,  where  is  buried  the  hermit  who  rebuked 
Ivan  the  Terrible. 

'  It  was  between  7  and  8  when  we  arrived.    Never  had 


426 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


we  such  a  disembarkation  before.  There  was  red  cloth 
laid  down  into  the  station,  servants  dressed  like  the  doges 
of  Venice  in  red  embroidered  cloaks  and  white  ruffs. 
Young  Loftus,  a  very  handsome  young  man  with  a  letter  of 
instruction  from  his  father  —  and  then  appeared  three  royal 
carriages.  Into  the  first  the  stately  servants  instantly 
placed  Augusta,  and  before  I  had  time  to  move,  off  she  was 
driven.  Into  the  second  Lady  Emma  Osborne,  which  in 
like  manner  drove  off.  Into  the  third,  called  out  as  for 
"  Herr  Decant,"  I  entered,  and  in  this  magnificent  style 
we  were  carried  through  the  wintry  streets,  amidst  a  falling 
snow  shower,  along  the  quays,  to  the  door  of  one  of  the 
great  compartments  of  the  Winter  Palace. 

'  There  we  were  again  received  by  an  array  of  servants 
and  by  two  Chamberlains,  in  full  Court  costume,  to  welcome 
and  explain  everything.  The  rooms  are  magnificent  —  a 
large  suite  for  us,  and  another  suite  below  for  Lady  Emma, 
all  looking  out  on  the  Neva.  The  temperature  warm,  but 
not  oppressive,  and  if  it  was  colder  we  could  have  open 
fires. 

'We  had  just  finished  a  delicious  tea  when  Countess 
Bloudhoff  was  announced  —  one  of  the  ancient  ladies  of  the 
Court,  speaking  English  down  to  its  very  depths.  She 
spoke  first  to  Augusta  and  Lady  Emma,  and  then,  turning 
to  me,  said,  "  As  for  you,  you  are  an  old  friend.  The 
French  say,  '  Un  livre  est  une  epitre  ^crite  a  des  amis  in- 
connus.'  I  am  one  of  those  unknown  friends  who  know 
you  by  your  books,  and  by  all  I  have  heard  of  you  from 
Philaret  and  from  Prince  Urusoff,"  &c.  .  .  .  She  had  put 
in  my  room  a  beautiful  little  picture  of  Philaret  to  greet 
me. 

'Then  came  Col.  Colville,  with  a  letter  from  Lord  A. 
Loftus,  to  announce  that  I  was  to  be  presented  to  the 
Emperor  the  next  day.  Accordingly,  after  a  morning's 
walk  on  the  Quay,  I  went  with  him,  in  full  Court  dress,  first 
to  Prince  Gortschakoff,  the  Prime  Minister,  and  was  left 
alone  with  him  for  a  very  agreeable  half-hour,  he  talking 
excellent  English  about  the  persons  he  had  known  in  Eng- 
land—  Mr.  Canning,  Sir  W.  Scott,  &c.  He  had  been  at 
the  Coronation  of  George  IV.  Then  I  came  back  with 
Lord  A.  Loftus,  and  was  driven  to  another  door,  where 
T  found  myself  amid  a  host  of  ofificers  of  the  Army  and 
the  Court.    One  of  them  took  charge  of  me,  asked  me 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


427 


many  questions  about  the  Stanley  family  —  whether  the 
gipsies  did  not  acknowledge  Lord  Derby  as  their  king,  &c. 

'  Then  I  was  ushered  into  the  Emperor's  room.  He  was 
quite  alone,  standing  in  full  uniform  by  a  desk,  exceedingly 
gracious.  At  first  he  spoke,  in  English,  of  my  former  visit, 
and  my  knowledge  of  Philaret.  I  said  that  I  had  much  en- 
joyed my  stay,  but  never  dreamed  of  coming  again  under 
such  auspicious  circumstances,  and  hoped  that  the  benedic- 
tions of  both  the  Churches  might  descend  on  an  event  so 
happy  for  both  countries.  "  The  only  sufferers,"  I  said, 
"are  the  parents."  His  eyes  filled  with  tears,  and  he  said, 
"  Yes,  it  is  true,  she  has  been  the  joy  of  our  lives,  but  it 
must  be."  It  was  impossible  not  to  be  moved  by  his  emo- 
tion. He  then  turned  off  to  speak  of  the  Epiphany  Fes- 
tival, and  I  told  him  how  much  I  had  desired  to  see  it,  and 
had  only  seen  the  ceremony  before  in  Greece.  We  then 
parted. 

'  Augusta,  meanwhile,  with  Lady  Emma,  had  been  sent 
for  to  the  Empress,  and  just  as  I  was  passing  through  the 
galleries  I  was  also  summoned  to  see  her.  She  was  with 
the  Grand  Duchess  and  Prince  Alfred.  There  is  some- 
thing singularly  amiable  about  the  Empress  and  singularly 
frank  and  cheerful  in  the  Grand  Duchess.  We  had  much 
conversation  on  the  marriage  ceremony. 

*  By  this  time  it  was  far  on  in  the  day,  and  it  became 
necessary  to  take  measures  for  making  some  of  the  innu- 
merable calls.  Accordingly,  I  had  a  list  made  out  of  the 
various  members  of  the  Imperial  Family,  took  one  of  the 
carriages,  and,  under  the  charge  of  one  of  these  Venetian- 
looking  servants,  drove  in  succession  to  six  of  the  palaces. 
The  door  was  opened;  the  servant  announced,  "This  is 
Oldenburg"  —  "This  is  Vladimir,  son  of  Alexander,"  and 
so  on.  At  the  Cesarewitch's  there  was,  in  a  book  for  the 
inscription  of  names,  an  entry  which  puzzled  me  —  the 
"  Prince  and  Princess  Walesky."  At  last  I  saw  it  was 
Russ  for  "of  Wales."  Tea  with  Countess  Bloudhoff,  and 
there  met  Prince  Urusoff  —  delighted  to  see  me,  and  re- 
membering all  our  old  Moscow  adventures  in  1857.  Dined 
with  the  household,  and  then  to  bed,  after  going  with  all 
the  officers  and  ladies  to  Evening  Service  in  the  Imperial 
Chapel.  This  morning  (January  i8th),  at  11  a.m.,  at  the 
Imperial  Chapel  again  — a  vast  crowd  of  officers,  2  metro- 
politans, 2  bishops,  6  archimandrites,  and  a  splendid  choir. 


428 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


The  Emperor  and  all  the  Princes,  Russian  and  English, 
were  present.  One  of  the  dignitaries  who  stood  by  us  ex- 
plained each  part  of  the  service.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
endless  repetition  it  would  have  been  very  fine  ;  as  it  was, 
the  Nicene  Creed  and  the  Lord's  Prayer,  chanted  by  the 
choir,  was  splendid. 

'  This  lasted  for  more  than  an  hour,  and  then  I  was  hur- 
ried away  through  the  corridors,  filled  with  troops  and  ban- 
ners, to  a  window  commanding  the  Neva.  This  gave  a  full 
view  of  the  ceremony.  Out  of  the  palace  filed  soldiers, 
chanters,  deacons,  archimandrites,  bishops,  metropolitans, 
the  Emperor  and  all  the  Princes,  bareheaded,  to  a  small 
temporary  chapel  on  the  frozen  river,  with  a  hole  under- 
neath it,  for  the  benediction  of  the  water.  An  immense 
crowd  under  the  windows,  like  that  in  the  Piazza  of  St. 
Peterson  Easter  day.  Guns  fired  the  moment  that  the  bene- 
diction was  completed,  and  then  every  face  turned  upwards 
and  every  breast  crossed.  The  only  thing  wanting  was  the 
weather ;  it  was  a  dismal  dark  thaw. 

*  Immediately  after  this  the  procession  returned  into  the 
Palace,  and  room  after  room  was  opened,  with  little  tables 
for  lunch.  At  one  of  these  we  were  seated,  when  in  came 
the  Emperor,  sat  down,  and  talked  to  Augusta.  The  whole 
scene,  inside  and  outside,  even  with  this  deplorable  weather, 
was  magnificent,  beyond  my  expectation. 

'Then  at  4  p.m.  was  the  service  in  the  English  Church. 
All  the  English  Princes  were  there,  and  the  church  was 
crowded.  I  preached  on  the  Marriage  Feast  of  Cana, 
which  was  not  only  the  Gospel  of  the  day  in  New  Style, 
but  the  Second  Lesson  for  the  Epiphany,  Old  Style.^  None 
of  the  Imperial  Family,  but  several  of  the  Court,  were 
there,  and  it  was  very  affecting.  The  Prince  of  Wales  has 
written  a  very  kind  note,  begging  that  it  may  be  printed 
.  .  .  And  now  I  must  end  .  .  .  As  for  being  too  cold,  I 
have  never  been  so  warm  in  winter,  inside  or  outside  ;  and 
as  for  the  interest,  the  kindness,  and  the  splendour,  they 
are  not  to  be  exaggerated.' 

'  Winter  Palace,  St.  Petersburg :  January  j\ . 

'It  is  hardly  possible  to  find  time  to  write,  or  even  to 
collect  one's  thoughts.    I  think  I  left  off  on  Sunday  night. 

^  The  Marriage  Feast,  a  Sermon  preached  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Royal 
Factor)'  at  St.  Petersburg.    St.  Petersburg,  1S74. 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


429 


On  Monday  morning  we  went  with  two  of  the  Court 
ladies,  wonderfully  intelligent,  to  the  Museum  in  the 
Hermitage.  Imagine  what  it  is  !  An  immense  collection 
of  pictures,  statues,  and  antiquities,  almost  like  the  Vati- 
can, under  the  same  roof  as  the  Palace.  It  is  needless  to 
describe  it ;  but  what  is  truly  astonishing,  and  what,  having 
been  discovered  since  I  was  here,  I  had  not  seen,  are  the 
Grecian  sculptures  of  the  habits  of  the  Scythians  400  years 
B.C.,  in  which  there  are  the  most  beautiful  representations 
of  peasants  in  the  same  costume  and  with  the  same  customs 
as  you  see  in  Russia  now.  Whilst  we  were  deep  in  these 
there  came  a  message  from  the  Empress,  to  say  that  she 
desired  to  have  my  sermon  read  to  her.  I  had  lent  the 
MS.  to  someone,  and  a  man  was  instantly  despatched  to 
fetch  it.  It  arrived  just  before  the  hour  named  by  the 
Empress. 

'  The  interview  was  deeply  affecting.  There  was  no  one 
but  herself  and  the  Grand  Duchess,  and  I  begged  her  to 
interrupt  me  if  there  was  anything  which  she  did  not 
understand.  This  led  to  a  constant  series  of  remarks  and 
questions  as  I  went  on  ;  and  when  I  came  to  the  part 
relating  to  the  feelings  of  the  parents,  it  was  a  hard  struggle 
to  get  through.  After  it  was  over  they  both  discussed,  in 
the  most  easy  and  natural  manner,  the  details  of  the  mar- 
riage ceremonies,  and  parted  with  the  most  gracious  sayings, 
and  expressions  of  desire  to  have  it  printed  and  translated. 

'  At  4  P.M.  we  went  again  to  tea  with  Countess  Bloudhoff, 
and  there  met  a  most  delightful  (I  speaking  German) 
ecclesiastic,  lanishoff,  to  make  whose  acquaintance  had 
been  the  one  recommendation  of  the  Empress  Augusta. 

'  At  6  P.M.  we  dined  with  the  Emperor.  It  was  a  dinner 
of  80,  everyone  in  uniform  except  Lord  Suffield,  F.  Knollys, 
and  myself.  The  Emperor  said  a  few  kind  words  about 
the  sermon  before  dinner.  I  sat  between  Countess  Bloud- 
hoff and  Countess  Adelsberg  (the  wife  of  one  of  the  two 
chief  Ministers),  Augusta  between  the  Cesarewitch  and  the 
Grand  Duke  Alexis.  All  the  English  Royal  party  and 
their  suite  were  there.  The  dinner  was  extremely  short, 
and  the  whole  party  broke  up  at  9  p.m. 

'  Tuesday.  —  lanishoff  came  by  appointment,  dressed  in 
red  robes  and  Order,  wrapped  up  in  fur.  ...  I  started  with 
him  in  a  sledge  to  pay  my  official  visits  to  the  three 
metropolitans  of  St.  Petersburg,  Moscow  and  Kief,  and 


430 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


Bajanoff,  the  Chaplain  of  the  Imperial  Family,  who  will 
perform  the  marriage,  as  being  a  married  man,  and  also 
from  his  having  been  their  spiritual  director  for  three 
generations. 

'  The  first  visit  was  to  Isidore  of  St.  Petersburg.  Nothing 
could  be  more  cordial.  He  kissed  me  three  times  on  each 
side  of  the  face,  as  did  all  the  others.  We  discussed  various 
topics  with  each.  I  asked  Isidore  about  the  Bulgarians 
and  various  points  connected  with  the  marriage.  Innocent 
of  Moscow,  who  was  almost  blind,  and  whom  I  had  seen 
before  at  Moscow  as  Archbishop  of  Kamschatka,  was  ques- 
tioned about  missions.  Ascanius  of  Kief  talked  history, 
and  I  asked  him  what  opinion  was  held  in  Russia  of  the 
guilt  or  innocence  of  Mary  Stuart.  Bajanoff  spoke 
English,  and  had  Scott  and  Mant's  Bible.  It  really  was 
touching  to  see  how  totally  without  jealousy  or  any  sort  of 
feeling,  except  love  for  the  Emperor's  family,  they  all  seem 
to  be. 

'To-day  is  the  first  fine  day  —  brilliant  sun  —  and  all  the 
morning  was  spent  in  driving  to  and  fro  in  sledges  from 
church  to  church. 

'  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  comfort.  In  no 
winter,  anywhere,  have  I  felt  so  absolutely  saved  from  the 
slightest  sensation  of  disagreeable  cold.  The  preparations 
for  the  marriage  are  very  little  discussed.  The  programme 
is  only  published  to-day.  I  had  a  long  talk  with  the  Duke 
of  Edinburgh  over  all  the  details,  and  found  him  very 
agreeable. 

'The  music  is  to  be  by  the  Russian  choir,  and  I  shall 
add  a  special  prayer  of  my  own.  The  chief  difficulty  in 
composing  it  was  to  avoid  the  question  of  precedence 
between  the  two  families.  You  will  see  how  I  have 
endeavoured  to  manage  it.^ 

2  The  following  is  the  special  prayer  used  by  Stanley : 

'  O  Lord,  our  Heavenly  Father,  King  of  kings  and  Lord  of  lords,  who  dost 
from  Thy  throne  behold  all  the  dwellers  upon  earth,  and  of  whom  every  family 
in  heaven  and  earth  is  named,  most  heartily  we  beseech  Thee  to  look  with 
Thy  favour  on  these  Royal  and  Imperial  Houses  in  this  moment  of  their 
union. 

'  Pour  down  the  riches  of  Thy  grace  and  the  abundance  of  Thy  consola- 
tions on  the  august  parents  of  her  whom  they  now  commit  as  of  special  trust 
to  the  husband  of  her  choice,  and  to  the  care  and  keeping  of  our  most 
Gracious  (^ueen,  whom  may  God  long  preserve. 

'  Let  Thy  blessing  descend  on  the  heirs  of  thrones  and  kingdoms  who 
stand  before  Thee  this  day,  and  give  to  them  and  to  all  other  members  of  the 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


'  At  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Isaac  I  was  presented  by  the 
Arch-Presbyter  with  a  book  that  had  been  prepared  for 
Bismarck,  but  which,  as  he  did  not  come,  they  determined 
to  give  to  me.  What  a  triumph  to  have  something  which 
Bismarck  lost  ! 

'There  are  in  the  Winter  Palace  1,600  rooms  and  4,000 
inhabitants. 

'  To-night  I  went  to  the  Russian  Geographical  Society. 
The  reports  made  one  feel  how  one  is  on  the  very  frontier 
of  Asia.' 

'  Winter  Palace ;  January  H,  n  A.M. 

'The  morning  of  a  mighty  day  —  dark,  dull,  thaw. 
Yesterday  was  spent  almost  entirely  in  preparations  —  the 
arrangements  of  the  Hall,  the  rehearsal  of  the  Russian 
singers,  the  negotiations  between  the  Grand  Marechal  de 
la  Cour  and  the  Metropolitans  for  their  coming  to  our 
service;  and  —  not  last,  not  least  —  the  endeavour  to  find 
a  bouquet  of  white  roses  in  which  to  entwine  a  sprig  of 
myrtle  which  had  come  in  a  box  from  Osborne,  to  be 
presented  to  the  Grand  Duchess. 

'  Elphinstone  and  I  set  off  in  a  sledge  to  a  flower-shop 
to  which  we  were  directed,  and  on  arriving  found  the  roses 
by  dint  of  hazarding  the  word  "rose,"  and  remembering 
the  word  "  Baby  "  for  "  white  "  ;  but  not  the  possibility  of 
a  step  further,  from  the  total  ignorance  of  French,  English, 
or  German.  At  last  the  man  made  a  sign,  and  took  us 
to  his  next  neighbour,  a  barber.  In  a  moment  the  whole 
thing  was  cleared  up.  The  barber  not  only  spoke  excellent 
French,  but  conducted  the  negotiation  in  a  style  worthy  of 
Gortschakoff.  "Choose,"  he  said,  "from  the  roses  what 
you  consider  the  best,  and  I  will  tell  him  that  must  be  the 
worst  amongst  the  roses  that  he  is  to  send.    Do  not  say 

Imperial  and  Royal  families  here  present  the  will  and  the  power  to  fulfil  Thy 
work,  and  hand  it  on  to  their  children  and  their  children's  children. 

'  Bless  all  estates  of  men  in  both  lands,  that  all,  whether  in  Church  or 
State,  in  their  several  vocations  and  ministries,  may  serve  Thee  to  the  edifying 
of  Thy  people  and  the  glory  of  Thy  great  name,  in  knowledge  of  Whom 
standeth  our  eternal  life,  and  Whose  service  is  perfect  freedom. 

'Grant  that  the  union  in  deeds  of  war,  which  this  Hall  celebrates,  may  be 
exchanged  for  the  more  blessed  union  of  brotherly  kindness  and  perseverance 
in  well-doing;  that  peace  and  happiness,  truth  and  justice,  faith  and  charity, 
may  be  established  among  us  for  all  generations,  and  that  by  divers  gifts  from 
East  and  West,  from  North  and  South,  Thy  kingdom  may  be  built  up  and 
enlarged  ever  more  and  more,  in  the  unity  of  the  Spirit  and  in  the  bond  of 
peace,  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Redeemer.' 


432 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


too  much  about  lilies-of-the-valley,  or  he  will  send  nothing 
but  them."  We  did  not  tell  him  for  whom  we  wanted 
them,  but  I  shall  after  the  marriage. 

'Tea  as  usual  with  Countess  Bloudhoff ;  then  dinner, 
then  to  the  play  —  one  I  had  long  wished  to  see,  "The 
Life  of  the  Czar,"  a  most  instructive  national  story  from 
the  times  of  the  first  Romanoff,  all  in  Russ,  but  admirably 
explained  to  us  by  one  of  the  angels  of  the  Court,  one  of 
those  wonderfully  intelligent  ladies.  It  represented  three 
things  all  in  one  —  the  hatred  to  the  Poles,  the  devotion 
to  the  Emperor,  and  a  Russian  marriage.  Then  to  an 
evening  party  at  Count  Adelsberg's,  the  most  influential 
of  the  Russian  grandees  —  music,  ending  with  a  supper, 
which  lasted  till  2  a.m.  The  Prince  of  Wales  was  there, 
the  Duke  of  Coburg  (whom  I  had  not  seen  since  Egypt), 
and  a  vast  succession  of  Russian  magnates. 

'And  now  we  are  all  arrayed  —  I  in  my  red  robes  for 
the  Russian  service,  to  be  exchanged  for  white  for  the 
English,  Augusta  in  lilac  and  resplendent  with  diamonds. 
Lady  Emma  in  pink.  At  12  we  start  —  I  with  my  two 
chaplains,  the  two  English  clergymen. 

'The  marriage  is  over!  At  twelve  we  started  —  i.e.  I 
and  my  two  assistants  were  conducted  to  our  places  in  the 
Imperial  Chapel,  close  to  the  chancel  rails,  where  all  the 
clergy,  not  of  the  Greek  Church,  were  placed.  It  corg- 
manded  the  whole  view  of  the  ceremony,  which  I  need  not 
describe.  It  was  a  very  pretty  sight.  All  the  old  metro- 
politans were  there,  even  the  blind  Innocent  of  Moscow, 
and  stood  round  in  their  splendid  vestments,  whilst  the 
venerable  chaplain,  Bajanoff,  formed  the  centre  of  the 
bridal  group. 

'  It  was  much  more  like  a  family  gathering  than  anything 
in  Western  Churches.  The  bride  and  bridegroom  were 
closed  round  by  the  four  groomsmen  (for  there  are  no 
bridesmaids),  as  if  protecting  them,  and  the  crowns  are 
held  over  their  heads  so  long  as  to  give  the  impression  of 
a  more  than  fugitive  interest.  The  walking  round  and 
round  the  altar,  with  these  four  youths  pacing  with  them, 
had  quite  the  effect  of  what  originally  it  must  have  been, 
a  wedding  dance.  The  sunshine,  which  after  a  dull,  gloomy 
morning  had  gradually  crept  into  the  dome,  at  this  moment 
lighted  up  the  group  below,  and  gave  a  bright,  auspicious 
air  to  the  whole  scene.    The  singing  was  magnificent. 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


433 


The  Lord's  Prayer  again  struck  me  as  the  most  beautiful 
vocal  music  I  had  ever  heard. 

'At  a  given  moment,  just  before  the  conclusion  of  the 
service,  one  of  the  Court  officers  came  to  summon  me  away. 
With  difficulty  we  found  our  way  through  the  crowd  to  the 
antechamber,  where  I  changed  my  red  robe  for  my  white 
ones,  and  immediately  took  my  place  on  the  high  platform 
which  had  been  made  in  front  of  the  altar  that  stood 
against  the  screen.  All  the  curtains  were  drawn  down, 
and  all  the  candles  lighted,  so  that  the  whole  place  was 
transformed. 

'  The  Hall  was  full  from  end  to  end  —  far  more  than  the 
English  Church  would  have  accommodated  —  and  as  I 
looked  down  upon  the  vast  array  of  officers,  &c.,  it  was  a 
splendid  sight.  The  Russian  choir  was  on  my  right,  the 
English  residents  on  my  left ;  the  two  English  clergy  on 
each  side,  and  the  five  Russian  clergy,  who  came  in  with 
changed  garments  as  soon  as  their  service  was  over. 

'  Then  came  up  the  Hall  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  and 
stood  before  me,  the  Emperor  and  Empress  on  their  right. 
The  music  of  the  choir  broke  out  with  Psalm  xxi.  i  as  they 
advanced. 

'  It  was  a  thrilling  moment  when,  for  the  first  and  last 
time  in  my  life,  I  addressed  each  by  their  Christian  name  — 
"  Alfred  "  and  "  Marie  "  —  and  looked  each  full  in  the  face, 
as  they  looked  up  into  mine.  The  first  part  of  the  service 
I  read  from  the  Coronation  Prayer-book.  The  second,  from 
one  lent  by  Lady  Mary  Hamilton,  out  of  which  were  mar- 
ried George  IV.,  the  Princess  Charlotte,  William  IV.,  the 
Duke  of  Kent,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales.  At  the  very  end 
came  the  Prayer,^  which  you  will  doubtless  see  in  the  news- 
papers ;  then  the  final  benediction  and  the  chanting  of 
Psalm  cxii.  I,  2,  3. 

'  When  this  was  over  I  bowed  to  the  Emperor  and  Em- 
press, and  they  returned  it ;  and  I  then  turned  round  to 
the  metropolitans  and  kissed  their  hands.  Immediately 
afterwards  I  was  summoned  away  to  sign  the  leaf  of  the 
Register,  which  had  been  brought  from  the  Chapel  Royal. 
All  the  Princes  were  there,  signing  as  witnesses.  The 
Grand  Duke  Constantine  was  exceedingly  kind,  and  begged 
to  see  me  on  the  first  opportunity.  "There  is  so  much," 
he  said,  "that  we  have  in  common." 


^  The  Prayer  which  Stanley  used  is  given  on  pp.  430-1. 
VOL.  II  FF 


434 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


'  At  4.30  P.M.  followed  the  banquet  of  800  guests.  I  sat 
by  the  Danish  Minister ;  opposite  me  were  the  Emperor 
and  the  whole  line  of  Princes  and  Princesses.  The  four 
heirs  of  England,  Russia,  Denmark,  and  Germany,  all  so 
different,  each  from  each,  but,  of  all,  certainly  none  to 
compare  with  the  last.  He  is  like  a  sunbeam  wherever  he 
goes.  These  were  all  waited  on  by  the  high  dignitaries  of 
the  Court,  who  stood  behind  and  talked  to  them.  Then  at 
9.30  a  ball,  or  rather  an  immense  evening  party,  multitudes 
and  multitudes  spreading  through  hall  and  galleries,  in  one 
of  which  the  Princes  danced,  or  rather  walked,  the  Polo- 
naise —  once,  the  Emperor  with  Augusta.  Even  if  it  were 
only  for  the  new  acquaintances  we  have  made,  what  a 
wonderful  episode  this  will  be  ! 

'  We  are  both  perfectly  well.' 

'January  if,  1874. 

'  The  day  of  the  marriage  was  so  filled  with  successive 
scenes  and  incidents  that  it  was  impossible  to  recall  at  the 
end  all  one  had  lived  through.  Did  I  describe  the  signing 
of  the  Register  in  the  "  Malachite  Drawing-room  "  It  was 
filled  with  the  Princes  and  great  dignitaries.  The  Emperor 
was  standing  by,  and  warmly  pressed  my  hand,  saying, 
"May  God  bless  what  you  have  done!  "  The  Empress  was 
sitting,  as  she,  and  she  alone,  had  sat  through  the  two 
services,  fragile,  silent,  and  woe-worn,  but  with  perfect 
self-control. 

'  It  was  my  work  to  sign  first.  I  filled  up  the  blank 
space  :  "At  —  St.  Petersburg,  in  the  Alexander  Hall  of  the 
Winter  Palace,  prepared  for  the  purpose ;  solemnised  — 
Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  Dean  of  Westminster."  The 
Grand  Duke  Vladimir  held  the  sheet  as  I  wrote,  and  then 
threw  sand  over  it  as  it  was  finished. 

'  Then  came  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  and  then  twenty- 
five  other  signatures,  beginning  with  the  Emperor,  and 
ending  with  the  Chaplain,  Mr.  Thompson.  As  I  had  to 
wait  till  he  had  signed,  we  were  there  to  the  last.  The 
floor  was  almost  covered  with  the  trains  of  the  Princesses. 
It  was  impossible  to  tread  here  or  there  without  putting 
one's  foot  on  one  or  other  of  them,  as  on  a  separate  carpet. 
The  Crown  Princess  came  up  with  her  most  gracious  smile, 
and  said  to  one  of  the  Grand  Dukes  near  her,  "  You  could 
not  have  abetter  benediction  on  the  marriage."    The  Grand 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


435 


Duke  Constantine  introduced  himself,  and  expressed  his 
great  desire  to  have  a  "good  long  talk."  ' 

'  Wednesday,  January  \\,  1874. 

*  After  the  marriage  everything  becomes  less  interesting. 
The  faces  of  the  two,  as  I  saw^  them  kneeling  before  me, 
and  the  firm  yet  tremulous  voices,  still  remain  in  my 
memory,  over  and  above  everything  else.  Then  came  the 
Saturday.  I  cannot  recall  what  we  did.  Then  Sunday. 
I  preached  for  the  famine  of  a  district  on  the  Volga.  The 
Princes  were  prevented  at  the  last  moment  from  coming, 
but  the  Princess  of  Wales  was  there,  and  a  crowded  con- 
gregation. 

'Afterwards  there  was  a  luncheon  at  the  clergyman's 
house  with  the  churchwardens  and  English  residents. 
On  the  Sunday  evening,  after  dining  as  usual  with  the 
household  in  the  Palace,  we  went  to  a  concert  of  sacred 
music  given  by  the  Grand  Duchess  Marie,  in  consideration 
of  the  English  scruples  about  Sunday.  The  anthems  were 
sung  by  the  choir  from  the  Imperial  Chapel,  and  were 
as  good  as  it  was  possible  to  imagine.  Afterwards  the 
Grand  Duchess  showed  us  over  her  house.  It  is,  if  any 
place  ever  was  in  this  world,  a  "Palace  of  Art"  —  com- 
fortj  space,  splendour,  pictures  of  every  kind,  water-colour 
drawings  of  all  the  famous  places  she  has  seen  (including 
Westminster  Abbey).  "  Look  at  that  little  fellow  in  the 
corner.  He  is  my  uncle,  Alexander  I.  Look  at  him  in 
that  other  corner  —  he  is  grown  a  little  older."  She  her- 
self was  overflowing  with  wit  and  intelligence. 

*  On  Saturday,  I  now  remember  that  in  the  morning  we 
went  again  to  the  Hermitage,  to  see  the  pictures,  with 
Mademoiselle  Voiekof,  one  of  the  ladies  of  the  Court. 
She  is  one  of  those  wonderful  persons  that  one  only  meets 
in  Russia  —  knowing  every  subject,  speaking  every  lan- 
guage, sacrificing  herself  entirely  to  the  persons  with  whom 
she  is,  as  devout  as  she  is  liberal,  and  as  liberal  as  she  is 
devout,  as  frank  and  straightforward  as  she  is  kind  and 
considerate.  With  her  we  saw,  what  I  had  seen  with  such 
interest  on  my  first  visit,  the  Gallery  of  Peter  the  Great, 
and  then  the  chief  pictures.  There  are  also  two  wonderful 
sculptures,  one  by  Michael  Angelo  of  a  human  creature 
scooped  out  of  a  square  block  of  marble,  with  the  most 
muscular  development  which  it  is  possible  to  imagine. 


436 


LIFE  OF  BEAM  STANLEY 


Another  by  Raphael  of  a  child,  one  of  the  Holy  Innocents, 
caught  up  by  a  dolphin. 

'  From  this  we  returned  to  our  rooms  to  meet  Macarius, 
Archbishop  of  Vilna,  one  of  the  most  intelligent  of  the 
Russian  prelates.  As  he  knew  only  Russ,  Mademoiselle 
Voiekof  came  to  interpret,  and  the  conversation  was 
doubly  interesting  from  her  additional  information,  and 
appreciation  of  all  that  was  said. 

'  That  afternoon,  as  usual,  we  drank  tea  with  the  Countess 
Bloudhoff,  and  there  met  a  new  set  of  scientific  men. 
We  dined  that  night  with  the  Grand  Duchess  Catherine, 
daughter  of  the  accomplished  Grand  Duchess  Helen,  whose 
acquaintance  had  been  so  strongly  urged  upon  me  in  1857 
by  Prince  Urusoff,  and  whom  we  had  seen  at  Lucerne  in 
1864.  "How  strange!"  I  said  to  Prince  Urusoff,  who 
was  there,  "  that  your  wish  should  have  been  fulfilled,  and 
that  we  are  thus  dining  together  at  her  daughter's."  She 
and  her  children  were  very  charming. 

'Then  we  went  to  the  Chreptowiches,  vi^ith  whom  we 
had  been  engaged  to  dine,  but  from  whom  the  invitation 
of  the  Grand  Duchess  had  parted  us. 

'  I  return  to  Monday.  We  had  intended  to  go  to  the 
Alexander  Nevski  Monastery.  "  Impossible,"  said  Coun- 
tess Bloudhoff  ;  "  the  Grand  Review  will  make  it  impossible. 
The  Palace  is  surrounded  by  troops  from  1 1  to  2."  So  a 
messenger  was  despatched,  and  we  remained  for  the  Re- 
view. The  Crown  Princess  begged  us  to  sit  with  her  in 
an  embrasure  of  the  window  looking  out  on  the  Alexander 
Green  while  it  went  on.  I  am  not  much  interested  in 
reviews,  but  it  was  curious  to  see  the  immense  masses  as- 
sembled, and  the  infantry  leaping  up  and  down  to  warm 
their  feet  in  the  frozen  snow,  and  the  Cavalry  galloping  to 
and  fro  over  the  ice  without  falling. 

'  Then  we  went  to  the  Imperial  Library.  I  had  been 
much  struck  by  it  before ;  how  much  more  now  that  the 
whole  staff  of  librarians  turned  out  to  receive  us  !  No 
library  that  I  have  ever  seen  is,  as  regards  its  curiosities, 
so  well  arranged.  Since  I  was  there  they  have  received 
the  two  most  authentic  copies,  both  of  the  Bible  and  the 
Koran.  The  light  faded  away  before  we  had  seen  all  that 
we  desired. 

'That  night  we  dined  with  the  Emperor  and  Empress 
—  a  dinner  of  twenty-two.    Augusta  sat  by  the  Emperor, 


CHAP.  XXVI 


ST.  PETERSBURG 


437 


I  by  a  charming  lady  whose  name  I  never  heard.  The 
Empress  begged  to  have  the  additional  Prayer  I  had 
made. 

'  On  Tuesday  we  started  at  lo  a.m.  for  the  Alexander 
Nevski.  The  Monastery  is  a  kind  of  little  Westminster 
Abbey,  the  place  of  interment  for  famous  and  noble 
families.  But  the  interesting  part  of  the  visit  was  the  in- 
spection of  the  students  at  the  school  and  college  attached  — 
very  rough,  and  strange  in  appearance,  but  some  of  them 
exceedingly  quick,  and  the  subjects  of  their  studies  some- 
thing quite  surprising  in  the  midst  of  their  barbarism.  The 
"Rector,"  the  chief  of  the  place,  lanishoff,  is  a  delightful 
man,  speaking  German  and  French,  and  entering  with  the 
greatest  ardour  into  all  I  said.  He  is  a  married  priest, 
and  Augusta  visited  his  wife.  She  was  deaf,  but  very 
pleasing.  There  was  also  an  old  sister  living  with  them, 
and  a  peasant  who  had  brought  him  up  after  his  mother's 
early  death,  and  whom,  therefore,  he  had  constantly  living 
with  them.  From  this  I  flew  back  in  a  sledge  to  the  Palace 
for  the  presentation  to  the  Duchess  of  Edinburgh,  who  was 
now  returned  from  Tsarskoe  Selo.  All  the  English  and 
German  suites,  all  the  Corps  Diplomatique  and  many  of  the 
great  functionaries,  were  there.  We  went  in  with  the 
English  suite.  She  and  the  Duke  came  in,  her  train  borne 
up  behind  her,  and  with  them  Augu.sta  and  Lady  E.  Osborne, 
as  in  waiting.  There  was  a  large  semicircle,  and  she  went 
round  with  the  utmost  self-possession,  with  a  word  of  Eng- 
lish or  German  to  each,  as  the  case  might  be. 

'  When  this  was  over  I  went  to  have  my  hair  cut  at 
the  benevolent  barber's  who  had  helped  us  out  of  our 
difficulty  about  the  roses.  He  had  found  out  in  the  mean- 
time who  we  were,  and  expressed  his  profound  delight  at 
having  thus  met  "  Votre  Eminence." 

'  I  dined  at  Prince  Gortschakoff's  —  a  large  party.  Sat 
between  two  most  agreeable  Russians,  Chreptowich,  and 
Valouieff,  who  takes  in  the  "Times"  and  knows  every 
single  question  discussed  in  England — boatraces,  Exeter 
reredos,  Tichborne,  &c.  Then  to  the  theatre,  to  see  "  Ivan 
the  Terrible,"  a  most  interesting  historical  play,  in  Russ, 
but  every  sentence  explained  by  Mademoiselle  Voidkof  as 
it  went  on.  Wednesday,  at  9.30  a.m.,  we  started  in  sledges 
to  see  the  house  of  Peter  the  Great.  It  was  as  I  saw  it  in 
1857,  only  that  the  devotion  was  increased  —  the  little 


438 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


chapel  was  so  filled  with  worshippers  that  it  was  impossi- 
ble to  enter.  Then,  in  a  drifting  snowstorm,  through  "the 
Islands"  —  the  same  that  I  had  seen  before  on  that  lone: 
summer  evenmg.  At  12,  once  more  through  the  Hermi- 
tage, to  show  it  to  James.*  At  1.30  I  had  summoned  all 
the  British  Protestant  clergy — Presbyterians,  Independ- 
ents, &c.  —  to  join  in  presenting  a  Russian  translation  of 
the  Bible,  from  the  Bible  Society,  to  the  Grand  Duchess. 
She  received  us  and  it  just  before  her  second  grand  recep- 
tion. Nothing  could  have  been  more  ready  and  gracious 
than  her  answers.  Some  calls,  and  then  to  dine  at  the 
British  Embassy  —  and  now  I  write  all  this  while  everyone 
else  is  at  the  Opera.' 

'  Moscow  :  ,  1874. 

Feb.  5  ^ 

'  Here  once  more  in  this  famous  place !  It  seems 
hardly  credible  that  all  the  events  have  occurred  in  the 
interval  which  make  the  sixteen  years  of  absence  so  long. 
We  started  at  8  a.m.  yesterday  in  the  Imperial  train.  Each 
person  has  a  compartment,  or  nearly  so,  to  himself  —  the 
ladies  and  gentlemen  apart  —  and  for  the  greater  part  of 
the  day  I  was  absolutely  alone,  all  intercourse  with  the 
others  being  cut  off  by  the  Imperial  saloon,  which  came 
between.  Latterly  I  got  round  during  one  of  the  stop- 
pages, and  had  a  very  agreeable  evening.  We  halted  for 
breakfast  and  dinner,  each  of  which  was  with  the  Emperor 
and  family.  They  all  came  except  the  Empress  and  the 
younger  Princes.  The  Crown  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Prussia  had  gone  on  before.  At  each  large  station  at 
which  we  stopped  there  were  illuminations,  hurrahs,  and 
National  Hymns  sung  by  hundreds  of  peasants.  The 
whole  country  was  wrapped  in  deep  snow. 

'At  Moscow,  which  we  reached  at  11  p.m.,  there  was 
an  immense  crowd  and  (for  the  first  time  since  our 
visit)  an  immense  confusion.  The  Royal  servants  from 
Petersburg  had  come  with  us,  and  they  were  some  help  — 
but  the  multitude  of  carriages  and  sledges  in  the  streets 
made  progress  for  a  time  impossible.  At  last  we  reached 
the  hotel  at  i  a.m.,  where  rooms  had  been  taken  for  the 
whole  suite,  there  being  no  room  in  the  Kremlin.  It  is  a 
modern  hotel,  but  built  after  the  fashion  of  an  Eastern 
caravanserai. 

His  footman,  James  Brookes,  now  one  of  the  vergers  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 


CHAP.  XXVI 


MOSCOW 


439 


'In  the  morning  the  same  clatter  of  carriages  again. 
At  10.30  we  drove  (by  order)  to  the  Kremlin.  There  we 
found  ourselves  in  one  of  the  Great  Halls,  and  the  first 
person  that  recognised  me  was  Serge  Sukatin,  the  eldest 
of  the  two  brothers  ;  Michael,  my  special  friend,  I  have 
not  yet  seen.  There  was  a  large  assemblage  of  the  Court 
dignitaries  of  Petersburg  and  Moscow.  At  last  came 
our  host ;  the  door  opened,  and  in  walked  the  Emperor 
with  the  Princess  of  Wales,  the  Prince  of  Wales  with  the 
Crown  Princess,  the  Crown  Prince  with  the  Cesarevna,  the 
Bride  and  Bridegroom,  &c.  They  marched  straight  on, 
the  whole  of  their  promiscuous  Court  assemblage  following, 
through  the  three  Great  Halls  of  St.  Andrew,  St.  George, 
and  St.  Alexander,  down  through  the  ancient  Hall  of  the 
Patriarchs,  through  a  long  corridor  lined  with  peasants  in 
their  peasants'  dresses,  holding  in  their  hands  their  wed- 
ding gifts  of  cakes,  &c.  ;  and  then,  through  a  very  high, 
covered  space,  we  were  in  the  old  cathedral  church.  The 
two  Vicars  of  the  Metropolitan  were  there,  with  all  the 
clergy,  amongst  others,  either  the  same,  or  a  successor  of 
the  same.  Deacon  with  the  sonorous  voice  of  1857.  There 
was  instantly  sung  a  Te  Deum,  and  then  all  the  members 
of  the  Imperial  Family  went  round  and  kissed  the  sacred 
pictures  —  the  Grand  Duchess  hand-in-hand  with  the  Cesar- 
evna. The  church  was  entirely  filled,  strange  to  say,  not 
only  with  grandees,  but  with  very  humble  middle-class,  and 
peasants.  It  was  a  touching  and  splendid  sight,  such  as 
could  be  seen  in  no  other  country  but  this.  As  regards 
the  outward  show  of  religion  in  general,  I  do  not  wonder 
at  their  thinking  all  the  other  Churches  pagan  in  com- 
parison. 

'Then,  while  Augusta  was  preparing  for  the  reception 
(to  which,  as  having  been  presented  already  at  Peters- 
burg, I  did  not  go),  I  went  to  the  review  in  the  great 
riding-school.  I  was  the  only  civilian  present,  and  when 
it  was  over  the  Emperor  walked  straight  across  the  empty 
space,  and  said,  with  his  most  gracious  smile,  "  You  will 
end  by  being  a  military." 

'  This  afternoon  I  took  Augusta  to  the  view  from  the 
Kremlin  walls.  It  is  certainly  less  attractive  in  winter 
than  in  summer.  The  waste  of  snow  is  not  an  adequate 
substitute  for  the  forest  of  gardens,  out  of  which,  when 
last  I  saw  it,  the  city  seemed  to  spring,  and  the  gilded  and 


440 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


coloured  domes  and  towers  need  a  bright  sun  to  set  them 
off.  To-night  I  looked  for  the  first  moment  of  the  Em- 
peror's arrival  at  the  Opera,  and  then  came  away.  I  do 
not  think  it  was  more  enthusiastic  than  that  for  any  other 
popular  sovereign.  But  of  course  these  manifestations  are 
always  touching.' 

'  Kremlin,  Moscow :        ^} ,  1874. 

Feb.  6 

'  To-day  we  went  to  see  the  antiquities  of  the  Kremlin. 
After  losing  ourselves  again  and  again  in  the  Palace,  we 
at  last  stumbled  on  one  excellent  guide  after  another, 
ending  with  Serge  Sukatin,  and  had  them  explained  to  per- 
fection. The  wonders  were  greater  even  than  I  had  remem- 
bered. 

'This  lasted  till  2  p.m.  At  2.30  we  started  in  a  sledge, 
through  driving  snow,  to  meet  the  Princess  of  Wales  and 
her  sister  at  the  Foundling  Hospital.  We  went  through 
immense  galleries  of  nurses  and  babies,  and  then  re- 
freshed ourselves  by  another  snowy  drive  round  the 
Kremlin. 

'At  5.30  there  was  a  state  dinner  in  the  Vladimir  Hall 
of  the  Kremlin.  It  was  of  at  least  200.  We  had  met  in 
the  Hall  of  St.  George,  and  then  passed  into  this,  each  as 
splendid  as  the  other  and  magnificently  lighted,  and  at  the 
chief  table,  where  the  Emperor  sat,  the  plate  consisted  of 
ancient  flagons  and  plates  and  ornaments,  all  English  (with 
the  exception  of  two  or  three  Danish,  out  of  compliment 
to  the  Prince  of  Denmark  and  the  Cesarevna),  presents  to 
the  former  Czars  from  Elizabeth,  James  I.,  and  Charles  I. 
—  the  Danish  ones  from  Christian  IV.  Augusta  sat  be- 
tween the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Duke  of  Coburg,  I 
between  the  Greek  Minister  and  Countess  Tolstoi.  The 
dinner,  which  was  as  short  as  it  was  interesting,  ended  by 
the  proposal  of  the  health  of  "la  Reine  Victoria,"  "I'Em- 
pereur  de  I'Allemagne,"  et  "le  Roi  Chretien,"  by  the 
Emperor;  the  "Bridal  Pair"  by  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and 
(I  think)  the  "  Imperial  Family  "  by  the  Crown  Prince. 

'  After  dinner  we  returned  to  the  Hall  of  St.  George, 
and  there  we  stood  round  while  the  Emperor  and  Princess 
walked  to  and  fro,  talking  now  to  this,  now  to  that  one. 
At  the  same  table  as  the  Emperor,  at  the  opposite  end 
from  where  I  sat,  had  been  the  two  Vicars,  coadjutor- 


CHAP.  XXVI 


MOSCOW 


441 


bishops  of  the  present  Metropohtan  —  one  of  whom  (Leon- 
idas)  had  been  a  sailor  and  spoke  English.  The  Emperor 
went  up  to  them  and  spoke  to  them  for  some  minutes,  and 
then  stepped  across  to  me  and  introduced  me  to  Leonidas. 

'At  10.30  there  was  the  ball  of  the  nobles,  if  ball  that 
can  be  called  which  had  hardly  the  semblance  of  a  dance. 
We  found  ourselves  on  a  spacious  platform  protruding  into 
an  immense  hall,  crowded  as  thick  as  it  could  be  packed 
with  human  heads,  like  the  Guildhall  on  a  nomination  day, 
or  Exeter  Elall  at  some  popular  meeting,  the  galleries 
above  also  filled  —  in  short,  a  dense  assembly  of  more  than 
4,000  people. 

'  When  the  Imperial  party  entered  the  band  struck  up, 
a  fountain  in  the  far  distance  began  to  play  in  the  midst 
of  a  silvery  illumination,  and  a  long  line  of  sudden  light 
ran  round  the  two  sides  of  the  cornices,  joining  at  the  end 
of  the  Hall.  When  the  band  ceased  there  was  a  loud 
cheer,  and  when  the  cheer  ceased  the  Emperor  led  the 
Princess  of  Wales  down  into  the  narrow  lane  opened 
through  the  crowd,  and  marched  with  her  through  the 
Hall,  and  up  again  to  the  platform,  and  down  again, 
followed  by  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Edinburgh,  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Cesarevna,  &c.,  &c.,  and  whilst 
this  was  going  on  I  came  here,  and  am'  writing  to  you. 

'To-day  (Saturday)- we  went  with  Serge  Sukatin  through 
the  Patriarchal  Library,  the  old  scenes  of  Nicon's  life,  the 
Church  of  the  Coronations,  the  Church  of  the  Burials,  the 
old  original  Church  of  the  Kremlin,  which  I  had  not  seen 
before,  and  then  a  beautiful  drive  to  the  Sparrow  Hills  and 
the  Donskoi  Monastery.  It  was  the  first  very  bright,  very 
cold  day  we  have  had,  but  quite  delightful,  a  sledge  with 
three  horses  tearing  over  the  deep  snow,  and  from  the 
Sparrow  Hills,  the  Monte  Mario  of  this  Russian  Rome, 
the  domes  and  towers  flashed  in  the  glorious  sunlight. 
Blind  old  Eugenius,  Abbot  of  the  Donskoi  Convent,  was 
dead,  and  I  visited  his  grave. 

'  To-night  we  dined  with  the  Emperor  in  his  private 
apartments.  This  morning  Michael  Sukatin  came,  quite 
unaltered,  and  full  of  delight  at  seeing  me. 

'  Su7iday.  Service  at  the  English  Church  at  11.  I 
preached  on  the  Lesson  of  the  day.  At  i  p.m.  I  went  with 
the  Emperor  and  all  the  Princes  an  hour  and  a  half's 
journey  by  the  railroad  (new  since  1857)  to  the  Convent 


442 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


of  Troitsa.  For  the  Emperor  and  the  Imperial  Family  it 
was  a  real  pilgrimage.  They  went  simply  that  the  Grand 
Duchess  might  salute  the  tomb  of  St.  Sergius  before  her 
departure  from  Russia.  We  were  only  there  an  hour,  and 
of  course  saw  nothing  of  the  wonders  which  I  had  seen  on 
my  first  visit.  But  the  general  effect  was  very  fine. 
Thousands  of  peasants  on  the  hills  of  snow.  At  our  disem- 
bai'kation,  sledges  upon  sledges,  each  with  three  horses, 
tearing  through  the  snowdrifts  up  to  the  Convent  with  the 
Princes  and  their  suites,  the  great  bell  ringing,  the  church 
densely  crowded,  the  feeble  old  Abbot  aged  so  much  since 
1857  that  I  should  not  have  known  him,  the  Emperor  and 
the  Princes  kissing  the  tomb  of  the  old  hermit.  We  went 
from  this  church  to  an  adjoining  church,  where  the  old 
Philaret  is  buried.  The  Emperor  pointed  it  out  to  me 
himself,  and  then  said,  "  Here  is  someone  who  remembers 
you."  It  was  Grotsky,  the  Theological  Professor  of  1857. 
He  kissed  me  many  times,  as  did  the  old  Abbot,  exclaim- 
ing, "  Stanley  !  Stanley  !  "  and  uttering  a  few  words  of 
Latin.  We  came  back,  and  dmed  with  the  Emperor  at  the 
station  at  7. 

'  They  went  back  to  Petersburg.  We  stayed  on  for  three 
days,  and  moved  to  the  Kremlin,  to  the  rooms  occupied 
and  vacated  by  the  Prince  of  Wales.  This  was  the  climax 
of  the  whole  journey.  To  have  spent  three  days  in  that 
historic  Palace,  with  the  view  of  Moscow,  was  indeed 
delightful.  On  Monday  night  there  was  a  dinner  given  to 
us,  to  which  were  invited  all  the  most  interesting  people  in 
Moscow.' 

'  Berlin  :  February  yth,  1874. 

'  Here  we  arrived  this  morning  at  5  a.m.  The  glorious 
dream  is  over,  and  the  most  splendid  certainly,  and  one  of 
the  most  interesting,  passages  of  my  life. 

'  The  last  days  at  St.  Petersburg  were  n"ot  behind  the 
first  in  their  continued  delight,  only  obscured  to  me  in 
some  degree  by  a  heavy -cold  I  had  caught  at  Moscow. 
The  Thursday  night  I  went  to  a  meeting,  half  lay,  half 
ecclesiastical,  under  the  auspices  and  at  the  invitation  of 
the  Grand  Duke  Constantine.  To  my  great  surprise,  the 
meeting  was  opened  by  one  of  the  members  of  the  Imperial 
Council.     M.  Pobedonestcheff,^  whom  I  had  often  met  at 

^  Stanley's  manuscript  copy  of  the  Address  is  endorsed  with  the  words, 
'  The  best  appreciation  of  my  relations  with  the  Eastern  Church.' 


CHAP.  XXVI       RETURN  TO  ST.  PETERSBURG 


443 


the  Palace,  in  a  French  address,  in  the  most  beautiful 
language,  expressed  in  the  name  of  the  meeting  their 
felicitations  and  farewells  to  me.  I  care  neither  about 
praise  nor  blame,  but  it  was  a  wonder  and  pleasure  to  find 
myself  so  perfectly  understood  by  a  man  who,  a  month 
before,  had  never  seen  me.  I  answered  in  a  few  words  of 
English. 

'  Friday,  I  forget  what  happened.  Saturday,  a  very  in- 
teresting day  in  the  Museum  of  Mines.  Sunday,  preached 
in  the  morning  in  Prince  Oldenburg's  Lutheran  Chapel, 
and  in  the  afternoon  my  farewell  sermon  to  many  English 
and  many  Russians  in  the  English  Church. 

'  In  the  evening  an  immense  state  dinner  at  the  Palace 
for  the  Emperor  of  Austria.  After  dinner  there  was  the 
usual  passage  to  and  fro  in  the  circle  of  guests.  We  spoke 
for  the  last  time  to  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Russia, 
and  I  saw  quite  close,  but  was  not  introduced  to,  the 
Emperor  of  Austria  —  older  and  plainer  than  I  expected. 
A  far  more  interesting  person  in  appearance  was  Andrassy, 
his  Prime  Minister,  in  Hungarian  dress,  with  the  black 
locks  and  handsome  face  of  a  romantic  bandit. 

'  Monday  I  went  to  the  Alexander  Nevski  Monastery 
once  more,  first  to  address  a  few  words  in  French  to  the 
students,  to  which  one  of  them  replied.  It  was  deeply 
affecting  to  me  — the  thought  that  these  were  the  only  words 
that  they  had  ever  heard,  or  were  ever  likely  to  hear,  from 
a  stranger,  and  the  last  time  that  I  was  ever  likely  to  see 
them.  Then,  by  invitation  of  the  Metropolitan  of  St.  Peters- 
burg, whose  fete  day  it  was,  I  breakfasted  or  dined  at  a  state 
banquet,  where  were  all  the  chief  lay  and  ecclesiastical  digni- 
taries connected  with  the  Church.  The  three  metropolitans 
and  the  other  members  of  the  Holy  Synod  were  opposite  to 
me,  and  the  great  lay  officer  of  it.  Count  Tolstoi,  sat  by  me. 
When  the  banquet  was  over,  after  the  usual  toasts  of  "  the 
Emperor,"  "the  Holy  Synod,"  the  "Metropolitan,"  the 
Metropolitan  rose,  and  (quite  without  precedent,  they  said) 
proposed  "the  Dean  of  Westminster,  and  the  Church  of 
England  as  represented  in  him,"  and  begged  me  to  convey 
his  salutations  to  the  Metropolitan  of  Canterbury.  He  also 
gave  me  a  Russian  Prayer  Book,  in  commemoration  of  the 
day.  I  returned  home,  visiting  the  Lutheran  bishop  on 
the  way.  We  had  a  sore  struggle  in  carrying  out  our  plan 
for  leaving  the  next  day,  so  many  things  still  to  be  done. 


444 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


But  we  thought  we  could  not  again  change.  On  the 
morning  of  Tuesday  we  took  a  last  drive,  in  bright  sunshine, 
in  a  sledge,  to  the  Neva,  and  then  took  a  drive  in  a  sledge 
with  the  Laplanders  and  the  reindeers.  We  had  seen  the 
Laplanders  on  our  first  day's  arrival,  but  not  the  reindeer. 
So  we  thus  ended  as  we  began.  It  was  deeply  affecting  to 
take  the  last  farewells.  Some  of  them  came  to  the  station. 
One  came  as  far  as  the  first  station  on  the  way. 

'  We  watched  all  the  signs  of  Russia  as  long  as  we 
could.  Peasants  —  wood-houses  —  gilded  cupolas  —  fields 
of  snow  —  at  last,  all  melted  away,  and  we  are  again  in 
the  common  life  of  Europe.' 

Among  the  many  friendships  which  Stanley  formed  in 
St.  Petersburg,  none  was  closer  or  more  lasting  than  that 
with  the  Countess  Bloudhoff.  The  Countess,  who  was 
already  advanced  in  years,  was  the  daughter  of  the  cele- 
brated Count  Bloudhoff,  herself  well  known  in  literary 
circles,  and  a  mine  of  tradition  respecting  the  reigns  of  the 
Emperors  Nicholas  and  Alexander  II.  With  her  Stanley 
maintained  for  several  years  a  copious  correspondence, 
which  only  ceased  with  his  death. 

In  his  first  letter  to  the  Countess,  Stanley  describes  the 
arrival  of  the  Duchess  of  Edinburgh  at  Windsor  in  March 
1874.    '  I  have  postponed,'  he  says, 

'  any  letter  till  we  could  give  you  some  account  of  the 
arrival  of  your  beloved  Princess.  The  Queen  invited  us  to 
come  here  on  Friday  evening,  so  as  to  be  in  time  for  the 
reception.  All  the  members  of  the  Royal  Family  that 
were  in  England  came  either  that  day  or  the  next.  Besides 
these  and  the  Household  there  were  no  other  guests. 

'The  day  itself  (March  7th,  N.S.)  was  one  such  as  we 
rarely  see  in  England  at  this  season  —  such  as  is  described, 
by  one  of  our  early  English  poets  : 

Sweet  day,  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  bright, 
The  bridal  of  the  earth  and  sky. 

Not  only  splendid  in  itself,  but,  unlike  our  variable  climate, 
so  fixedly,  solidly  fine  that  rain  and  mist  were  as  impossible 


CHAP.  XXVI   LETTER  TO  COUNTESS  BLOUDHOFF  445 


as  during  your  brilliant  winters  in  Russia.  The  coming  in 
of  March  was  that  of  a  lamb,  as  gentle,  as  pure,  as  spotless 
as  ever  followed  St.  Agnes. 

'We  saw  the  Queen  and  all  the  family  (except  Prince 
Arthur,  who  had  gone  to  meet  the  comers  at  Gravesend) 
drive  out  through  the  Park,  down  a  long  avenue  of  Guards, 
and  amidst  a  crowd  of  boys  from  the  great  school  of  Eton. 
We  waited  till  we  saw  the  head  of  the  returning  procession, 
and  then  went  down  to  the  entrance  of  the  Castle,  with  the 
other  members  of  the  Household,  to  receive  the  Queen  and 
the  bridal  pair. 

'The  Queen  and  her  daughter-in-law  stepped  out  first, 
and  as  soon  as  they  had  passed  inside  the  doors  she  kissed 
her  most  warmly. 

'  My  dear  wife  and  I  waited  till  the  carriage  arrived  con- 
taining our  old  Petersburg  friends,  and  you  may  imagine 
what  a  cordial  greeting  passed  between  us.  We  then  all 
followed  to  the  corridor  (which  is  a  kind  of  artery  to  the 
whole  Palace),  and  then  the  Queen  introduced  all  the 
members  of  the  Household  to  the  Grand  Duchess,  who 
looked  full  of  radiance  in  the  midst  of  her  new  home. 

'  There  was  no  flaw,  or  chill,  or  entanglement  of  any 
kind.  The. Queen  was  delighted  ;  the  bride  and  bridegroom 
were  quite  at  their  ease  ;  and  so  ended  the  vTravTH},  if  that 
is  not  too  sacred  a  word  to  use  on  what  is,  however,  like 
all  domestic  unions,  a  truly  sacred  thing.' 

The  letter  concludes  with  the  first  hint  of  the  fatal 
illness  from  which  Lady  Augusta  never  recovered.  '  We 
reached  our  Westminster  home,'  continues  Stanley  in  de- 
scribing his  journey  from  St.  Petersburg  to  London, 

'  on  the  25th  of  February,  and  on  that  night  were  summoned 
to  the  Queen,  who  was  in  London,  and  who  was  full  of 
impatience  to  hear  every  detail  of  our  visit.  The  next  day 
my  dear  wife  was  taken  with  a  very  severe  cold,  so  severe 
as  to  confine  her  to  her  room  for  a  week.  She  only  moved 
to  come  here  to  Windsor.  She  is,  I  am  thankful  to  say, 
almost  well.  How  thankful  we  both  are  that  we  escaped  all 
serious  illness  in  Russia,  where  our  time  was  so  precious  ! ' 

A  second  letter  to  the  Countess  Bloudhoff  was  written 
on  March  13th,  and  described  the  reception  of  the  Duchess 


446 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1874 


of  Edinburgh  at  Buckingham  Palace.  It  is  finished  by 
Lady  Augusta.    '  My  dear  husband,'  she  says, 

'is  at  this  moment  sitting  with  the  Committee  for  revising 
the  translation  of  the  New  Testament.  I  have  also  been 
very  busy  since  I  recovered  from  my  indisposition.  I  have 
on  my  hands  a  scheme  for  reorganising  the  nursing  in  our 
hospital  at  Westminster,  and  as  Easter  approaches  there 
are  multiplied  duties  and  arrangements  connected  with  the 
dear  Abbey.  We  hope  after  Easter  to  get  away  for  some 
quiet  days  to  Oxford,  when  he  can  have  uninterrupted  hours 
for  writing,  and  I  can  escape  from  the  door-bell !  We  had 
a  parish  meeting  last  week,  at  which,  instead  of  the  usual 
speech  on  parish  matters,  he  gave  an  account  of  our  visit, 
and  showed  your  bread  and  salt,  and  drew  many  useful 
lessons  from  the  life  of  your  great  Peter. 

'  On  Sunday  evening  we  went  to  a  lodging-house  where 
many  of  the  waifs  and  strays  of  London  gather,  and  there 
he  again,  after  reading  the  parable  of  the  Talents,  described 
what  had  been  achieved  by  that  great  man,  and  what  had 
been  achieved  by  one  since,  who  had  in  one  generation 
transformed  his  people  from  a  nation  of  serfs  to  a  nation  of 
free  men  ;  and  then  he  touched  on  what  each'  one  there 
could  do  to  shake  off  the  slavery  of  evil  habits  and  passions, 
which  any  might  feel  held  them  in  a  worse  bondage  than 
the  bondage  of  serfdom. 

'  I  thought  you  would  have  liked  to  know  how,  in  every 
way,  these  vivid  Russian  pictures  and  recollections  helped 
him,  in  giving  life  and  energy  to  himself  and  to  his  minis- 
trations. I  hope  and  trust  that  your  attack  has  been  quite 
got  over,  and  that  you  feel  strong  again. 

'  Remember  us  most  affectionately  to  all  our  friends.  I 
think  of  them  round  you  at  this  moment,  5  p.m.,  as  I  am 
preparing  the  tea  for  my  husband  when  he  comes  in,  and 
before  we  go  out  for  our  constitutional  walk. 

'  God  bless  you,  dearest  Countess, 

'  Yours  affectionately, 

'Augusta  Stanley.' 

One  result  of  the  recent  wedding  was,  that  in  the 
summer  of  1874  the  Emperor  of  Russia  paid  a  visit  to 
England.     Stanley  was   invited  to  meet   the   Czar  at 


CHAP.  XXVI 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


447 


luncheon  at  Marlborough  House.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who 
had  lately  become  Prime  Minister,  sat  in  a  post  of  honour, 
whilst  Mr.  Gladstone,  whose  fall  was  still  recent,  and  who 
had  lately  forsworn  public  life,  sat,  in  a  less  prominent 
place,  near  the  Dean.  When  the  company  rose  to  leave 
the  luncheon-room,  Mr.  Disraeli,  as  he  then  was,  came 
down  from  his  lofty  position,  and  passed  in  front  of  the 
place  where  Stanley  and  Mr.  Gladstone  were  standing.  He 
turned  to  his  political  rival,  and  said,  in  allusion  to  the 
latter's  absence  from  Parliament, 

'with  a  mixture  of  comedy  and  tragedy  expressed  on  his 
countenance,  "  You  must  come  back  to  us  ;  indeed,  we 
cannot  possibly  do  without  you."  Mr.  Gladstone,  with 
more  than  usual  severity,  answered,  "There  are  things 
possible,  and  there  are  things  impossible  ;  what  you  ask  me 
to  do  is  one  of  the  things  that  are  impossible."  Upon  this 
Disraeli  turned  to  me,  as  the  nearest  representative  of  the 
public  present,  and  said,  "You  see  what  it  is  —  the  wrath, 
the  inexorable  wrath  of  Achilles."  ' 

Stanley's  meeting  with  Lord  Beaconsfield  at  Hatfield 
has  been  already  mentioned.  During  that  visit  the  two 
men  went  together  to  see  the  Rye  House,  and  'Lord 
Beaconsfield  was  very  much  delighted  with  the  little  rustic 
parlour  in  which  we  had  tea  and  bread-and-butter.'  An- 
other meeting  with  him  is  worthy  of  record.  On  the  last 
Sunday  in  1876,  Stanley  was  walking  rapidly  towards 
Westminster  Abbey,  and  passing  Whitehall. 

'  Suddenly  Lord  Beaconsfield  came  out  into  the  street. 
I  touched  my  hat,  and  was  going  to  pass  on  ;  but  he  rec- 
ognised me,  and  said  something  kind  about  what  had 
occurred  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  year.^  He  then  said, 
"  My  head  is  full  of  telegrams.  Will  you  allow  me  to  take 
a  turn  with  you  and  get  some  fresh  air  "  I  of  course 
assented,  and  we  walked  on  towards  Westminster  Abbey. 
He  said,  "To-morrow  will  be  a  great  day  in  India.    It  will 

8  The  death  of  Lady  Augusta  Stanley. 


448 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


be  New  Year's  Day,  and  the  Queen  will  be  proclaimed  by 
her  new  title ;  the  imagination  of  the  Orientals  will  be 
strongly  impressed  by  the  pageant." 

'Then,  changing  the  subject,  he  asked,  "What  do  you 
think  of  my  new  bishop?"  It  was  the  Bishop  of  TruroJ 
I  said,  "  I  think  it  an  excellent  appointment.  You  know 
the  saying  of  Alphonso  the  Wise  :  '  Give  me  old  books  to 
read,  old  wood  to  burn,  and  old  friends  to  work  with.' 
The  Bishop  of  Truro  is  a  very  old  friend  of  the  Bishop  of 
Exeter,  and  therefore  they  are  sure  to  work  well  together." 
We  still  walked  on,  and  I  said  to  him,  "  You  have  not  only 
given  us  an  excellent  bishop  in  the  Bishop  of  Truro,  but  an 
excellent  canon  in  Canon  Farrar."  Lord  Beaconsfield 
made  some  remarks,  and  I  said,  "  I  am  going  to  hear 
what  he  has  to  say  on  the  last  Sunday  of  this  year ; 
but  I  am  not  going  into  my  regular  place,  but  into  the 
crowd,  like  Haroun-al-Raschid,  to  see  how  the  people 
behave." 

*  We  walked  on  still,  and  he  said,  "  I  have  never  heard 
him  ;  I  should  very  much  like  to  go,  too."  "  But,  my  Lord," 
I  said,  "  I  can  give  you  no  place,  because  I  go  as  one  of  the 
public."  He  said,  "That  is  exactly  what  I  should  like  to 
do.  I  like  these  Haroun-al-Raschid  expeditions."  We 
entered  the  north  transept,  which  was  crowded  to  excess. 
But  we  wound  our  way  through  the  crowd  till  we  reached 
the  monument  of  the  three  captains,  and  then  I  stood  on 
the  pedestal,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  by  my  side.  I  do  not 
think  that  the  people  gathered  who  we  were.  We  listened 
to  Canon  Farrar,  who  was  in  the  midst  of  an  eloquent 
passage  about  the  length  of  eternity,  for  about  five  minutes, 
and  then  I  turned  to  Lord  Beaconsfield  and  said,  "  Perhaps 
now  you  would  like  to  go."  He  said,  "But  is  it  possible.?" 
"  Perfectly,"  I  answered,  "  if  you  will  follow  the  same  course 
as  when  we  entered."  I  came  down  from  the  pedestal,  and 
he  followed  me,  and  we  wound  our  way  through  the  crowd, 
and  out  into  St.  Margaret's  Churchyard.  He  said,  "  I 
could  not  follow  him.  Perhaps  I  am  hard  of  hearing,  and 
I  was  not  accustomed  to  his  voice ;  but  it  was  a  fine 
delivery,  and  suitable  to  the  occasion.  But  I  would  not 
have  missed  the  sight  for  anything  —  the  darkness,  the 
lights,  the  marvellous  windows,  the  vast  crowd,  the  courtesy, 

'  The  present  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 


CHAP.  XXVI  THE  RUSSIAN  BAPTISTS 


449 


the  respect,  the  devotion  —  and  fifty  years  ago  there  M^ould 
not  have  been  fifty  persons  there  !  "  '  ^ 

During  the  visit  of  the  Emperor  to  England  Stanley 
was  able  to  make  good  use  of  the  influence  which  he  had 
acquired  in  Russia.  A  Hamburg  missionary  named 
Oncken  had  spent  a  long  life  in  missionary  work  on  the 
Continent,  and  had  planted  hundreds  of  Baptist  centres  in 
Europe,  from  Holland  to  the  Black  Sea.  For  some  years 
these  Baptists  had  been  exposed  to  cruel  persecutions  in 
Southern  Russia,  and  it  occurred  to  the  Reverend  Edward 
White,  one  of  the  many  Nonconformist  ministers  to  whom 
Stanley  gave  the  right  hand  of  fellowship,  and  not  the  left, 
that  he  might  obtain  help  from  the  Dean.  '  I  had  the 
pleasure,'  writes  Mr.  White, 

'of  accompanying  Mr.  Oncken  and  his  friend,  Mr. 
Wilkin,  to  the  Deanery.  The  Dean  and  Lady  Augusta 
received  us  with  their  usual  kindness,  their  minds  having 
been  prepared  for  the  interview  by  a  letter  in  which  we  had 
given  a  sketch  of  the  life  and  labours  of  the  excellent  man 
who  now  sought  his  aid.  The  interview  in  the  Dean's 
library  made  a  striking  picture :  the  venerable  and  stately 
form  of  the  man  through  whose  arduous  toils  at  least  a 
million  copies  of  the  Bible,  in  many  languages,  had  been 
circulated  in  Europe,  and  that  of  the  frail  Church  dignitary, 
that  minute  figure  into  which  God  had  poured  an  ineffable 
sum  of  ethereal  energy,  sweetness,  and  light  —  of  Heaven's 
best  natural  gifts  of  tenderness  and  humour,  joy  and  glad- 
ness. According  to  the  Dean's  theory  of  the  nature  of 
things,  he  could  not  feel  much  enthusiasm  for  seceders  from 
the  Russian  Church.  But  he  had  read  the  story  of  the 
Oncken  Missions  with  wonder,  and  was  struck  with  the 
gentle,  noble  personality  of  their  author.  The  Dean  re- 
ceived him  with  the  utmost  cordiality,  but,  promising 
nothing,  only  consented  to  watch  for  any  opportunity  of 

^  The  above  account  is  taken  from  an  MS.  volume  in  which  Stanley 
dictated,  or  noted  with  his  own  hand,  some  scattered  reminiscences  of  persons 
and  events  connected  with  his  life  at  Westminster. 

VOL.  II  GG 


450 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


useful  application  to  the  Russian  authorities,  frankly  con- 
fessing his  despair  of  being  able  to  interfere  with  success. 

'  Soon  after  this  interview  followed  the  visit  of  the 
Russian  Emperor  to  England.  Mr.  Wilkin  wrote  to  the 
Dean,  earnestly  reminding  him  of  his  promise.  After 
the  Emperor's  departure  the  Dean  wrote  as  follows  to 
Mr.  Wilkin: 

■ "  Deanery,  Westminster :  1874. 

'  "  My  dear  Sir,  —  I  am  extremely  touched  by  your  letter, 
the  more  so  from  feeling  how  ill  I  deserve  your  kind 
expressions  for  the  little  I  have  been  able  to  do.  I  can 
truly  say  that  the  matter  of  your  poor  friends  the  Baptists 
in  Russia  has  never  been  out  of  my  mind  during  the 
Emperor's  visit.  But  the  extreme  difficulty,  not  to  say 
impossibility,  of  introducing  a  somewhat  complicated  and 
probably  unexpected  subject,  either  to  the  Emperor  him- 
self or  to  any  of  his  suite,  was  increased  to  the  utmost 
extent  by  the  circumstance  that  the  actual  interviews  I 
was  able  to  have  with  any  of  the  party  amounted  to  not 
more  than  a  very  few  minutes.  I  had  hoped  from  day  to 
day  that  some  longer  opportunity  might  occur,  and  this, 
fortunately,  was  obtained  on  the  very  last  day,  when  we 
had  the  chance  of  speaking  on  the  subject  at  some  length 
to  one  of  the  Emperor's  most  trusted  friends,  to  whom  the 
matter  was  quite  new,  but  who  fully  entered  into  my 
feelings  on  the  occasion.  And  I  have,  since  their  depar- 
ture, written  to  this  same  person  in  the  same  sense,  urging 
that  if  any  mention  of  the  troubles  of  the  Baptists  should 
be  made,  it  should  receive  some  attention,  and  not  be  set 
aside  without  inquiry.  For  your  good  wishes,  for  your 
Christian  prayers,  for  your  generous  sympathy  with  one 
whom  you  must  regard  as  greatly  mistaken  in  many  points 
which  you  deem  highly  important,  I  beg  to  express  my 
heartfelt  thanks. 

* "  Yours  faithfully, 

'"A.  R  Stanley." 

*  After  a  time  the  news  arrived  in  England  that  a  special 
messenger  had  been  sent  from  St.  Petersburg  to  the  south 
of  Russia,  and  from  that  moment  no  further  accounts 
of  persecution  reached  Mr.  Wilkin  from  his  Baptist 
friends.' 


CHAP.  XXVI 


MRS.  ANNIE  BESANT 


The  incident  shows  that  in  the  midst  of  state  ceremonies 
other  aspects  of  his  life-interests  were  neither  forgotten  nor 
neglected.  He  was  always  ready  to  respond  to  the  call  of 
suffering.  Already,  as  Lady  Augusta's  letter  shows,  he 
had  thrown  himself  eagerly  into  his  professional  duties, 
and  was  using  his  new  experiences  as  a  means  of  interest- 
ing and  elevating  the  waifs  and  strays  of  London.  His 
interview  with  Mrs.  Annie  Besant,  in  April  1874,  six 
weeks  after  his  return  from  Russia,  affords  another  illus- 
tration of  his  keen  sympathy  with  sorrow,  and  of  the  per- 
sonal efforts  he  was  always  ready  to  make  for  its  relief. 

The  story  has  been  told  by  Mrs.  Besant  in  print. ^  Mrs. 
Besant,  who  at  the  time  was  nursing  her  dying  mother  in 
London,  was  entirely  unknown  to  the  world,  and  had  not 
become  a  public  character.  Everyone  is  apt  to  draw  — 
unconsciously  and  unintentionally  —  the  inferences  which 
best  agree  with  their  own  opinions.  The  story  rests 
entirely  on  Mrs.  Besant's  authority.  No  allusion  to  the 
incident  occurs  in  any  of  Stanley's  letters  ;  it  is  there- 
fore impossible  to  correct  the  impressions  produced  on 
Mrs.  Besant  by  any  explanation  of  the  circumstances  and 
motives  under  which  he  himself  acted,  or  to  verify  her 
recollection  of  his  words  by  any  authoritative  statement  of 
the  expressions  which  he  used. 

'  My  dear  mother  had  an  intense  longing  to  take  the 
Sacrament,  but  absolutely  refused  to  do  so  unless  I  partook 
of  it  with  her.  "  If  it  be  necessary  to  salvation,"  she  per- 
sisted doggedly,  "  I  will  not  take  it  if  darling  Annie  is  to 
be  shut  out.  I  would  rather  be  lost  with  her  than  saved 
without  her."  In  vain  I  urged  that  I  could  not  take  it 
without  telling  the  officiating  clergyman  of  my  heresy, 
and  that  under  such  circumstances  the  clergyman  would  be 
sure  to  refuse  to  administer  to  me.  She  insisted  that  she 
could  not  die  happy  if  she  did  not  take  it  with  me.  I 

»  Our  Corner,  October  1884. 


452 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


went  to  a  clergyman  I  knew  well,  and  laid  the  case  before 
him ;  as  I  expected,  he  refused  to  allow  me  to  communi- 
cate. I  tried  a  second ;  the  result  was  the  same.  I  was 
in  despair. 

'  At  last  a  thought  struck  me :  there  was  Dean  Stanley, 
my  mother's  favourite,  a  man  known  to  be  of  the  broadest 
school  within  the  Church  of  England ;  suppose  I  asked 
him .''  I  did  not  know  him,  though  as  a  young  child  I  had 
known  his  sister  as  my  mother's  friend,  and  I  felt  the 
request  would  be  something  of  an  impertinence.  Yet 
there  was  just  the  chance  that  he  might  consent,  and 
then  my  darling's  deathbed  would  be  the  easier.  I  told 
no  one,  but  set  out  resolutely  for  the  Deanery,  West- 
minster, timidly  asked  for  the  Dean,  and  followed  the 
servant  upstairs  with  a  very  sinking  heart.  I  was  left 
for  a  moment  alone  in  the  library,  and  then  the  Dean 
came  in. 

'  Very  falteringly  I  preferred  my  request,  stating  baldly 
that  I  was  not  a  believer  in  Christ,  that  my  mother  was 
dying,  that  she  was  fretting  to  take  the  Sacrament,  that 
she  would  not  take  it  unless  I  took  it  with  her,  that  two 
clergymen  had  refused  to  allow  me  to  take  part  in  the  ser- 
vice, that  I  had  come  to  him  in  despair,  feeling  how  great 
was  the  intrusion,  but  —  she  was  dying. 

' "  You  were  quite  right  to  come  to  me,"  he  said  as  I 
concluded  ;  "of  course  I  will  go  and  see  your  mother,  and 
I  have  little  doubt  that  if  you  will  not  mind  talking  over 
your  position  with  me  we  may  see  our  way  clear  to  doing 
as  your  mother  wishes." 

'  I  could  barely  speak  my  thanks,  so  much  did  the  kindly 
sympathy  move  me  ;  the  revulsion  from  the  anxiety  and 
fear  of  rebuff  was  strong  enough  to  be  almost  pain.  But 
Dean  Stanley  did  more  than  I  asked.  He  suggested  that 
he  should  call  that  afternoon,  and  have  a  quiet  chat  with 
my  mother,  and  then  come  again  on  the  following  day  to 
administer  the  Sacrament. 

*"  A  stranger's  presence  is  always  trying  to  a  sick  per- 
son," he  said,  with  rare  delicacy  of  thought,  "and,  joined 
to  the  excitement  of  the  service,  it  might  be  too  much  for 
your  dear  mother.  If  I  spend  half  an  hour  with  her  to-day, 
and  administer  the  Sacrament  to-morrow,  it  will,  I  think, 
be  better  for  her." 

'So  Dean  Stanley  came  that  afternoon,  and  remained 


CHAP.  XXVI        LECTURES  AND  ADDRESSES 


453 


talking  with  my  mother  for  about  half  an  hour,  and  then 
set  himself  to  understand  my  own  position. 

'  On  the  following  day  he  came  again,  and  celebrated 
the  "Holy  Communion  "  by  the  bedside  of  my  dear  mother. 
Well  was  I  repaid  for  the  struggle  it  had  cost  me  to  ask  so 
great  a  kindness  from  a  stranger  when  I  saw  the  comfort 
that  gentle,  noble  heart  had  given  to  my  mother.' 

The  first  six  months  after  Stanley's  return  from  Russia 
were  full  of  varied  work.  In  May  1874  he  read  before  the 
Royal  Institution  a  paper  on  '  The  Roman  Catacombs  as 
Illustrating  the  Belief  of  the  Early  Christians.'  '^^  In  the 
following  June  he  delivered  an  address  at  Bedford  on  the 
occasion  of  unveiling  the  statue  of  Bunyan.^^  Two  days 
later  he  spoke  to  the  boys  of  Rugby  School  on  the  thirty- 
second  anniversary  of  the  death  of  Dr.  Arnold  (June  I2th).^ 
In  the  same  month  also,  on  the  invitation  of  Dr.  Allon,  he 
gave  two  addresses  at  Cheshunt  College,  'an  institution,' 
as  he  describes  it,  'founded  by  that  strange  Protestant 
saint,  the  Countess  of  Huntingdon.' On  each  occasion 
he  seized  the  opportunity  to  enforce  his  own  views  of 
Christianity  and  its  duties.  'When  we  reflect,'  he  says  in 
his  paper  on  the  Catacombs, 

'  that  these  same  ideas  which  form  the  all-sufficing  creed  of 
the  early  Church  are  not  openly  disputed  by  any  Church 
or  sect  in  Christendom,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  ask 
whether,  after  all,  there  is  anything  very  absurd  in  supposing 
that  all  Christians  have  something  in  common  with  each 
other.  The  pictures  of  the  Good  Shepherd  and  of  the  Vine, 
the  devotional  language  of  the  epitaphs  —  I  know  not 
whether  they  would  be  called  sectarian  or  unsectarian, 
denominational  or  undenominational  —  but  they  have  not 
been  watchwords  of  parties  ;  no  public  meetings  have  been 
held  for  defending  or  abolishing  them,  no  persecutions  or 

10  May  28th,  1874.    Reprinted  in  Christian  Institutions. 

11  June  loth,  1874.     Published  in  Macmillan'' s  Mas^azine  for  July  1874. 
^2  Published  in  Macmillan' s  Magazine  for  July  1874. 

13  Published  in  Macmillan' s  Magazine  for  August  1874. 


454 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


prosecutions  have  been  set  on  foot  to  put  them  down  or 
to  set  them  up ;  and  yet  it  is  certain  that,  by  the  early 
Christians,  they  were  not  thought  vague,  fleeting,  unsub- 
stantial, colourless,  but  were  the  food  of  their  daily  lives — • 
their  hope  under  the  severest  trials  —  the  very  dogma  of  dog- 
mas, if  we  choose  so  to  call  them  —  the  very  life  of  their  life.' 

In  the  address  on  John  Bunyan,  the  universal  charity 
of  the  man  was  the  point  which  was  specially  emphasised, 
and  it  was,  argues  Stanley,  by  the  universality  of  his 
teaching  that  Bunyan  became  the  teacher,  not  of  any  par- 
ticular sect,  but  of  the  universal  Church. 

*  Protestant,  Puritan,  Calvinist  as  he  was,  yet  he  did  not 
fear  to  take  the  framework  of  his  story  and  the  figures  of 
his  drama  from  the  old  mediaeval  Church,  and  the  illustra- 
tions in  which  the  modern  editions  of  his  book  abound  give 
us  the  pilgrim  with  his  pilgrim's  hat,  the  wayside  cross,  the 
Crusading  knight  with  his  red-cross  shield,  the  winged 
angels  at  the  Celestial  Gate,  as  naturally  and  as  gracefully 
as  though  it  had  been  a  story  from  the  "Golden  Legend," 
or  from  the  favourite  romance  of  his  early  boyhood,  "  Sir 
Bevis  of  Southampton."  Such  a  combination  of  Protestant 
ideas  with  Catholic  forms  had  never  been  seen  before, 
perhaps  never  since.' 

What  was  it,  he  asks  in  his  address  on  the  great  Head- 
master of  Rugby,  that  Arnold  told  the  Rugby  boys  of 
religion  } 

'It  was  that  religion  —  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  God 
—  depends  on  our  own  moral  and  spiritual  characters.  He 
made  us  understand  that  the  only  thing  for  which  God 
supremely  cares,  the  only  thing  that  God  supremely  loves, 
is  goodness — that  the  only  thing  which  is  supremely  hate- 
ful to  God  is  wickedness.  All  other  things  are  useful, 
admirable,  beautiful  in  their  several  ways.  All  forms, 
ordinances,  means  of  instruction,  means  of  amusement, 
have  their  place  in  our  lives.  But  religion,  the  true  relig- 
ion of  Jesus  Christ,  consists  in  that  which  makes  us  wiser 
and  better,  more  truthful,  more  loving,  more  tender,  more 
considerate,  more  pure.    Therefore,  in  his  view,  there 


CHAP.  XXVI       STAATLEV'S  POSITION  IN  1874 


455 


was  no  place  or  time  from  which  religion  is  shut  out  — 
there  is  no  place  or  time  where  we  cannot  be  serving  God 
by  serving  our  fellow  creatures.' 

The  year  1874  marks  the  culminating  point  in  Stanley's 
career.  'No  clergyman,  perhaps,  who  ever  lived,'  to 
quote  the  words  of  Archbishop  Tait,  '  exercised  over  the 
public  at  large,  and  especially  over  the  literary  and 
thoughtful  portion  of  it,  so  fascinating  an  influence.'  He 
was  now  at  the  height  of  his  literary  fame.  As  a  writer 
and  as  a  preacher  he  held  the  ear  of  the  public.  Whatever 
he  wrote  or  said  commanded  respectful  attention.  He  was 
a  power,  not  only  in  the  Church,  but  in  the  world.  He  had 
made  Westminster  Abbey  a  centre  of  religious  and  national 
life.  His  home  at  the  Deanery  was  the  coveted  resort  of 
all  that  was  best  and  most  distinguished  in  English,  and, 
it  may  be  added,  in  Continental,  life.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  figures  in  society,  and  a  welcome  guest  in 
almost  every  house  in  London  or  the  country.  In  his 
writings,  his  sermons,  his  conversation,  his  kindly  acts  to 
rich  and  poor,  friends  and  strangers,  he  diffused  his  per- 
sonal charm  over  the  widest  possible  circle. 

His  power  in  the  world  was  partly  won  by  his  literary 
influence,  partly  by  his  social  gifts,  but,  most  of  all,  by  his 
character.  His  lively  flow  of  anecdote  and  reminiscences 
made  his  conversation  —  to  quote  once  more  the  words 
of  Archbishop  Tait  —  'the  most  instructive,  and  certainly 
the  most  interesting,  of  any  of  his  contemporaries.'  A 
humorous  and  sprightly  companion,  he  threw  himself  with 
the  eagerness  of  a  boy  into  every  innocent  amusement. 
His  talk  was  totally  free  from  assumption  or  self-assertion. 
His  simple  nature  remained  in  all  its  freshness,  unspoiled 
by  high  position,  social  favour,  or  worldly  success.  His 
transparent  sincerity,  his  disinterestedness,  his  indifference 
to  admiration,  his  disregard  of  obloquy,  his  readiness  to 


456 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1874 


forgive,  attracted  many  men  who  disliked  his  opinions  as 
dangerous.  No  opponent  who  was  brought  into  personal 
contact  with  him  questioned  his  single-mindedness,  or 
doubted  his  perfect  truthfulness,  or  suspected  him  of  vanity 
or  self-seeking,  or  dreamed  that  it  was  possible  for  him  to 
take  an  unfair  advantage  of  his  antagonists.  He  trusted 
his  fellow-men,  and  drew  them  towards  him  by  his  reliance 
on  whatever  was  best  in  their  characters.  Always  looking 
for  points  to  admire  rather  than  to  depreciate,  he  was 
without  a  tinge  of  jealousy.  No  one  ever  heard  a  sneer 
or  a  cruel  sarcasm  pass  his  lips  ;  his  irony  was  always 
playful,  and  his  jest  good-humoured.  Those  who  knew 
him  longest  and  most  intimately  agreed  in  the  testimony 
that  they  had  never  known  'so  white  a  soul,  so  single  a 
heart.'  To  the  innocence  of  his  pure  and  delicate  mind  it 
was  positive  pain  to  hear  of  anything  mean,  despicable,  or 
degrading  ;  if  his  indignation  did  not  flame  out  in  words, 
the  expression  of  his  face  and  the  change  in  his  manner 
showed  how  he  revolted  from  it  with  abhorrence.  Thus  it 
was  that  he  at  once  enjoyed,  and  elicited,  and  pleased,  all 
that  was  good  in  society,  and  society  was  the  better  for  his 
stimulating  and  elevating  presence. 

But  over  all  his  work  and  varied  interests  there  gradu- 
ally crept  the  shadow  of  Lady  Augusta's  illness.  In 
October  1874  he  writes  from  Bordeaux  to  M.  de  Circourt, 
saying  that  he  was  prevented  from  attending  the  Old 
Catholic  Congress  at  Bonn  by  the  advice  of  the  doctor,  who 
had  ordered  his  wife  to  take  sea-baths.  They  had,  in  con- 
sequence, followed  the  coast  of  France  from  Dieppe  to  La 
Rochelle,  combining  French  history  with  baths  and  douches. 
'  I  was  not  sorry  to  be  absent ; '  he  continues  : 

'  the  attempt  at  reunion  by  re-arranging  the  "  Confes- 
sions "  of  the  Churches  appears  to  me  not  only  the  wrong 
mode  of  producing  unity,  but  also  to  produce  an  inevitable 


CHAP.  XXVI      ILLNESS  OF  LADY  AUGUSTA 


AS7 


harvest  of  equivocal  and  useless  declarations,  in  which  I 
should  have  felt  myself  out  of  place.  The  true  union  is,  in 
my  judgment,  that  which  I  indicated  in  my  addresses  in 
Russia —  the  union  of  better  knowledge  and  mutual  appre- 
ciation, and  the  frank  recognition  of  the  different  vocations 
of  the  various  Churches.  To  acknowledge  this  is  death  to 
Ultramontanism,  and  it  is  death  conveyed  in  the  most  salu- 
tary and  Christian  form  —  by  the  perception  of  light  and 
life.  And  for  the  Old  Catholics  themselves,  I  am  persuaded 
.  .  .  that  their  best  hope  is  the  gradual  formation  of  a 
National  Church,  both  in  Germany  and  in  Switzerland.' 

On  their  way  back  from  Rochelle,  while  staying  with 
Madame  Mohl  at  Paris,  Lady  Augusta  was  prostrated  by 
a  fever,  which  reduced  her  to  the  extremity  of  weakness. 
'Thank  God  ! '  Stanley  writes  on  November  3rd,  1874, 

'the  illness  has  now  taken  a  favourable  turn,  and  my  dear 
wife  is,  for  the  first  time,  permitted  to  leave  her  bed  for  a 
few  hours.  My  relaxation  in  the  intervals  of  my  watching 
has  been  the  reading  of  the  "  Memoires  de  St.  Simon." 
Surely  he  is  the  French  Shakespeare.  Nowhere,  outside 
the  pages  of  the  great  English  dramatist,  is  there  such  a 
gallery  of  portraits  drawn  from  the  various  phases  of 
human  nature.' 

'  I  do  not  think,'  he  says  in  a  letter  to  his  sister  written 
on  the  same  day, 

'  that  it  would  be  possible  to  be  shut  up  (as  I  virtually  am) 
for  days  and  days  with  any  one  person  who  could  be  so 
unfailingly  entertaining  as  Madame  Mohl.  The  conversa- 
tion runs  in  two  channels  —  either  the  characters  and 
incidents  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.,  of  which  she  has  an 
astonishing  knowledge,  and  with  the  most  vehement  likes 
and  dislikes,  or  else  the  characters  and  histories  of  her 
living  friends  and  enemies,  who  are  described  and  analysed 
with  a  vivacity  that  knows  no  bounds.' 

Day  by  day  the  invalid  grew  slowly  better,  though  still 
too  weak  to  bear  the  journey  back  to  England.  It  was 
at  this  crisis  of  her  illness  that  Stanley  heard  of  the  death 


458 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


1874 


of  Mr.  Baillie,  the  husband  of  his  wife's  sister,  Lady  Frances 
BailUe.  He  carefully  concealed  the  news  from  his  wife, 
lest  the  shock  should  cause  a  relapse ;  but,  he  says, 

'it  is  heartrending  to  see  her  so  incessantly  treasuring  up 
her  little  experiences,  and  sending  messages  to  Fanny,  1* 
and  to  have  to  keep  up  a  cheerful  countenance  about  it ; 
but  so  it  must  be. 

'All  my  plans  have  been  overthrown.  I  had  intended 
a  course  of  lectures  this  winter  in  the  Abbey  on  the  rites 
and  sacraments,  &c.,  of  the  early  Church,  and  I  have  a 
sermon  to  preach  at  Oxford  in  December.  But  how 
thankful  we  should  be  that  this  is  the  first  interruption 
which  illness  has  thrown  in  my  way  since  1849!  I  wish 
that  one  of  the  theologians  or  philosophers  would  write 
something  satisfactory  on  Providence.  It  certainly  works 
in  a  very  "mysterious  way."  ' 

At  length  the  return  journey  was  successfully  accom- 
plished. '  Here  she  is,'  he  writes  from  the  Deanery  on 
November  21st,  1874, 

'  safe,  and,  I  trust,  recovering  ;  but  very  different  from  that 
indefatigable,  indomitable  dispenser  of  all  good  influences 
who  has  hitherto  shared  all  my  labours.' 

A  few  days  later  he  received  the  welcome  news  that  he 
had  been  elected  Lord  Rector  of  St.  Andrews,  a  distinc- 
tion which  he  highly  prized,  not  only  for  himself,  but  for 
the  sake  of  his  wife.  The  following  letter  from  Prin- 
cipal Tulloch  announced  his  election  and  described  his 
duties  : 

'St.  Andrews:  November  26th,  1874. 

'  My  dear  Dean,  —  I  have  the  pleasure  of  informing  you 
that  you  have  just  been  appointed  Rector  of  our  old  Uni- 
versity, the  state  of  the  vote  being  — 

'  Dean  Stanley,  70. 

'  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  66. 

'  I  hope  that  you  will  kindly  accept  the  office,  and  let  us 
enjoy  your  Rectorial  reign  for  three  years  at  least. 

^'  Lady  Frances  Baillie. 


CHAP.  XXVI    LORD  RECTOR  OF  ST.  ANDREWS 


459 


'  Your  duties  are  —  First,  to  appoint  an  Assessor  (as  he  is 
called),  to  be  a  member  of  the  University  Court,  who  must 
not  be  a  Principal  or  Professor,  but  any  other  person,  here 
or  elsew^here,  who  may  appear  to  you  interested  in  the  Uni- 
versity, and  likely  to  promote  its  welfare.  The  Rector  is 
head  of  the  Court,  the  senior  Principal  taking  his  place  in 
his  absence. 

'  Secondly,  you  are  expected  to  deliver  an  Address  to  the 
students  and  professors  at  such  time  during  the  session  as 
may  be  convenient  to  you. 

'Just  before  Easter  would  be  a  very  good  time  for  the 
Address.  After  the  usual  tumult  of  the  election  it  would 
be  well  to  give  the  students  a  quiet  time  for  work.  After 
Easter  would  be  too  late  for  the  Divinity  students,  who 
disperse  in  the  end  of  March. 

'  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  you,  and  to  give  you  any 
further  information  you  may  wish. 

'  I  was  sorry  to  notice  that  Lady  Augusta  had  not  been 
well.  Her  health,  I  hope,  has  improved  by  this  time. 
Believe  me 

'  Yours  always  truly, 

'John  Tulloch.' 

The  office  was  accepted  with  delight  by  the  first  Church 
dignitary  to  whom  it  was  ever  offered,  and  the  new  Lord 
Rector  appointed  his  nephew,  Lord  Elgin,  as  his  Assessor. 
His  Inaugural  Address  was  delivered  on  the  31st  of  March, 
1875.^^  In  his  'Lectures  on  the  Church  of  Scotland'  he 
had  been  eager  to  draw  a  moral  from  his  view  of  historical 
facts.  No  such  object  was  now  before  him,  and  his  Address 
was  therefore  less  open  to  hostile  criticism.  St.  Andrews 
was,  as  he  tells  M.  Mohl,  '  a  spot  which  I  had  long  known 
and  enjoyed,  and  I  was  able  to  speak  of  it  with  more  know- 
ledge and  more  enthusiasm  than  most  Lord  Rectors.'  In 
'  The  Study  of  Greatness  '  he  urges  that  the  special  duty  of 
education  in  an  age  of  equality  and  mediocrity  was  to  fix 

^''Sermons  and  Addresses  delivered  at  St.  Andrews:  'The  Study  of 
Greatness.'    London,  1877. 


460 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


the  minds  of  students  on  all  that  is  great  in  men,  in  books, 
in  ideas,  in  institutions.  The  ennobling  and  inspiring 
force  of  association  with  a  great  institution  like  that  of  St. 
Andrews  is  stated  in  glowing  words.  No  picturesque  point 
escapes  his  notice,  and  even  the  dullness  of  what,  to  other 
minds,  would  have  been  uninteresting  periods  of  its  history 
is  brightened  by  the  flash  of  genius.    '  Still,'  he  says, 

'  this  secluded  sanctuary  of  ancient  wisdom,  with  the  foam- 
flakes  of  the  Northern  Ocean  driving  through  its  streets, 
with  the  skeleton  of  its  antique  magnificence  lifting  up  its 
gaunt  arms  into  the  sky,  carries  on  the  tradition  of  its  first 
beginnings.  Two  voices  sound  through  it  :  "  One  is  of  the 
sea,  one  of  the  cathedral  "  —  "  each  a  mighty  voice  "  ;  two 
inner  corresponding  voices  also,  which  in  any  institution 
that  has  endured  and  deserves  to  endure  must  be  heard  in 
unison  —  the  voice  of  a  potent  past,  and  the  voice  of  an 
invigorating  future.' 

Nowhere  in  education  is  the  contemplation  of  great- 
ness more  profitable  than  in  theology.  The  barrenness 
of  Christian  theology,  as  compared  with  the  richness  of 
the  Christian  religion,  is  partly  due,  in  his  opinion,  to  the 
fact  that 

'  the  intellectual  oracles  of  the  Church  have  been  too  often 
looked  for  in  those  who,  by  imperfect  culture  or  meagre 
endowments,  are  entitled  only  to  a  very  inferior  place  in 
the  school  of  divine  philosophy.' 

In  the  first  ranks  of  Scottish  theology  he  places 

'  the  wise  humour,  the  sagacious  penetration,  the  tender 
pathos  of  Robert  Burns  ;  the  far-seeing  toleration,  the  pro- 
found reverence,  the  critical  insight  into  the  various  shades 
of  religious  thought  and  feeling,  the  moderation  which 
"  turns  to  scorn  the  falsehood  of  extremes,"  the  lofty  sense 
of  Christian  honour,  purity,  and  justice,  that  breathes  through 
every  volume  of  the  romances  of  Walter  Scott.  You  will 
not  suppose  that  in  thus  commending  the  works  of  secular 
genius  I  forget  that  neither  in  the  secular  nor  the  ecclesi- 
astical sphere  is  mental  power  a  guarantee  for  moral 
strength.    I  fully  grant  that  Burns,  by  his  miserable  weak- 


CHAP.  XXVI       ADDRESSES  AT  ST.  ANDREWS 


461 


ness,  was,  as  none  knew  better  than  himself,  a  beacon  of 
melancholy  warning,  no  less  than  of  blazing  light,  to  the 
youth  of  Scotland.' 

The  whole  Address  is  fired  with  the  conviction  that, 
however  dismal  and  ignoble  the  circumstances  of  the  age, 
'it  was  yet  possible  to  attain'  a  higher  and  'more  spiritual 
theology,  a  more  patriotic  and  generous  policy.'  He  con- 
cludes with  an  English  paraphrase  of  the  exulting  words 
of  the  victorious  Caesar  : 

'  Spe  trepido  :  hand  unquam  vidi  tam  magna  daturos 
Tam  prope  me  Superos ;  camporum  limite  parvo 
Absumus  a  votis.' 

*  I  tremble  not  with  terror,  but  with  hope. 
As  the  great  day  reveals  its  coming  scope  : 
Never  in  earlier  days,  our  hearts  to  cheer. 
Have  such  bright  gifts  of  Heaven  been  brought  so  near ; 
Nor  ever  has  been  kept  the  aspiring  soul 
By  space  so  narrow  from  so  grand  a  goal.' 

The  effect  of  the  Address  is  thus  described  by  Principal 
Shairp  in  a  letter  to  Lady  Augusta  : 

'  During  his  three  days  here  he  was  at  his  brightest 
and  best,  with  but  one  thing  wanting  to  make  all  perfect  — 
your  presence.  In  his  Address  on  Wednesday  he  sur- 
passed himself,  or,  rather,  I  should  say  that  he  was  at  his 
very  best.  I  put  his  Address  alongside  of  that  wonderful 
burst  at  the  Scott  Centenary  ;  only  that  was  but  twenty 
minutes,  this  was  maintained  for  nearly  an  hour  and  a  half. 
Everyone,  old  and  young,  was  hushed  and  thrilled  by  it. 
I  wish  you  had  seen  the  faces  of  the  students,  how  in- 
tent, eager,  and  responsive  they  were  as  they  drank  in 
every  word. 

'Then,  at  the  two  evening-parties  he  threw  himself  in 
among  the  students  in  a  way  that  astonished  everyone. 
Poor  shy  lads !  they  had  never  seen  before,  perhaps  will 
never  see  again,  such  a  man,  addressing  them  in  such  easy, 
equal,  and  hearty  terms.  The  naturalness  and  gracefulness 
with  which  he  moved  about  from  one  to  another  surprised 
me,  well  as  I  knew  the  charm  of  his  manner. 


462 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


'His  presence  has  been  like  a  bright  angel  visit,  that 
has  sweetened  many  a  heart  not  used  to  such  things. 
His  Address  and  his  influence  here  will,  I  trust,  be  no 
passing,  but  a  permanent,  good  to  the  old  place.  Before  the 
term  of  his  Rectorship  expires  we  shall  hope  to  see  him 
here  again,  and  you  with  him,  restored  to  health,  as  before.' 

The  second  Address  was  given  on  March  i6th,  1877. 
•  In  the  interval  Lady  Augusta  had  died,  and  the  keynote 
of  the  lecture  is  struck  in  the  opening  sentences.  By  her 
death  he  had  lost  a  mainstay  of  his  life.  At  the  same  time, 
the  divergence  between  the  faith  and  the  intelligence  of 
the  age  was  increasingly  manifest.  The  change  of  note 
was  partly  due  to  the  nature  of  the  subject.  He  felt,  as 
he  tells  the  Queen,  that  it  was  '  less  inspiring,  because  less 
congenial  to  the  mass  of  the  students.'  But  the  loss  of 
confidence  was,  in  a  larger  measure,  due  to  the  change 
which  he  recognised  in  the  tendencies  of  the  age.  'The 
face  of  Providence,'  he  writes  to  Professor  Max  Miiller 
about  this  time,  'seems  set  against  a  reasonable  progress 
of  Christianity.'  The  first  Address  had  insisted  upon  the 
brightness  which  the  contemplation  of  greatness  shed  upon 
the  studies  of  students.  'That  brightness,'  he  says  in  his 
address  on  '  The  Hopes  of  Theology,'  '  I  would  still  wish  to 
maintain,  though  within  a  more  definite  range,  and  in  a 
humbler  and  graver  tone,  more  suited  to  the  altered  cir- 
cumstances, both  of  him  who  speaks  and  of  you  who  listen.' 
Without  ignoring  the  outward  manifestations  of  danger,  he 
still  hopes  'that  the  difficulties  of  religion  —  national  re- 
ligion, Christian  religion  —  are  but  the  results  of  passing 
maladies,  either  in  its  professed  friends  or  supposed  foes.' 

His  buoyant  confidence  in  the  near  future,  which  in- 
spired the  first  Address,  is  gone.    Though  he  still  trusts 

18  Sermons  and  Addresses  :  'The  Hopes  of  Theology'  (also  published  in 
Macmillan's  Magazine  for  May  1877). 


CHAP.  XXVI       ADDRESSES  AT  ST.  ANDREWS 


463 


in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  cause  to  which  he  had 
devoted  his  energies,  he  despairs  of  the  present  generation. 
The  victory  will  not  be  won  to-day ;  it  is  inevitably  post- 
poned to  the  morrow. 

'  The  day,  the  year,  may  perchance  belong  to  the  de- 
structives, the  cynics,  and  the  partisans.  But  the  morrow, 
the  coming  century,  belongs  to  the  catholic,  comprehensive, 
discriminating,  all-embracing  Christianity,  which  has  the 
promise,  not,  perhaps,  of  the  present  time,  but  of  the  times 
that  are  yet  to  be.' 

His  hopes  of  the  future  were  based  on  the  great  ad- 
vance which  theology  had  made  in  these  latter  centuries. 
That  progress,  in  his  opinion,  consisted  in  the  increasing 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  essentially  supernatural 
elements  of  religion  are  those  which  are  moral  and  spiritual. 
On  the  means  by  which  these  spiritual  elements  of  Chris- 
tianity may  be  handed  on  and  developed,  and  on  the  charac- 
teristics by  which  they  may  be  distinguished  from  the 
like  elements  in  inferior  religions,  he  preached  two  striking 
sermons^'  at  St.  Andrews  on  March  i8th,  1877.  The  first 
contains  one  of  those  parallels  at  which  his  eye  was  always 
so  quick  to  gather  in  all  that  he  read  or  saw.  It  is  touched 
with  peculiar  deftness.  '  I  remember,'  says  Professor  Knight, 
'how  it  thrilled  and  lifted  up  the  audience  of  students  and 
professors  alike.' 

The  good  deeds,  the  good  thoughts,  the  good  memories 
of  great  men,  he  says,  elevate,  strengthen,  encourage,  or 
rebuke  those  who  come  after  them,  and  their  perpetuation 
is  'the  true  Apostolic  succession.' 

'The  weary  traveller  in  the  south  of  Spain  who,  after 
passing  many  an  arid  plain  and  many  a  bare  hill,  finds 
himself  at  nightfall  under  the  heights  of  Granada,  will 
hear  rushing  and  rippling  under  the  shade  of  the  spreading 

1"  '  Succession  of  Spiritual  Life  '  and  '  Principles  of  Christianity.'  Printed 
in  Sermons  and  Addresses. 


464 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


1875 


trees,  and  along  the  side  of  the  dusty  road,  the  grateful 
murmur  of  running  waters,  of  streamlets  whose  sweet  music 
mingles  with  his  dreams  as  he  sleeps,  and  meets  his  ear  as 
the  first  pleasant  voice  in  the  stillness  of  the  early  dawn. 
What  is  it  ?  It  is  the  sound  of  the  irrigating  rivulets 
called  into  existence  by  the  Moorish  occupants  of  Granada 
five  centuries  ago,  which,  amidst  all  the  changes  of  race 
and  religion,  have  never  ceased  to  flow.  Their  empire  has 
fallen,  their  creed  has  been  suppressed  by  fire  and  sword, 
their  nation  has  been  driven  from  the  shores  of  Spain,  their 
palaces  crumble  into  ruins,  but  the  trace  of  their  bene- 
ficent civilisation  still  continues,  and  in  this  continuity 
that  which  was  good  and  wise  and  generous  in  that  gifted 
but  unhappy  race  still  lives  on,  to  cheer  and  refresh  their 
enemies  and  conquerors.  Even  so  it  is  with  the  good  deeds 
of  those  who  have  gone  before  us.  Whatever  there  has 
been  of  grateful  consideration,  of  kindly  hospitality,  of 
far-reaching  generosity,  of  gracious  charity,  of  high-minded 
justice,  of  unselfish  devotion,  of  saintly  devotion  —  these 
still  feed  the  stream  of  moral  fertilisation,  which  will  run 
on  when  their  place  knows  them  no  more,  when  even  their 
names  have  perished.' 

The  delivery  of  the  Rectorial  Address  at  St.  Andrews 
in  March  1875  made  almost  the  only  break  in  a  year  of 
enforced  seclusion.  All  the  fluctuations  of  hope,  dread, 
and  despondency  are  recorded  in  Stanley's  letters,  written 
as  he  watched  by  the  side  of  his  sick  wife.  '  I  resign  my- 
self,' he  writes  to  Professor  Max  Miiller  in  February  1875, 

'to  six  months  of  this  stranded  existence.  If  at  the  end 
of  that  time  my  dear  wife  is  anything  like  what  she  was 
before  in  activity  and  strength,  I  shall  be  satisfied.  Like 
what  she  was  in  wisdom  and  love  she  is,  and  has  been 
throughout,  and  will  be,  I  have  no  doubt,  to  the  end.' 

'Our  life,'  he  tells  Madame  Mohl  in  June,  'is  sadly 
changed  —  a  mere  ghost  of  its  former  self.  But  she 
still  keeps  up  her  cheerfulness  and  her  patience  wonder- 
fully.' August  and  September  were  spent  at  Norwood. 
The  yearly  visit  to  Scotland  was  abandoned.    '  Unless  I 


CHAP.  XXVI       ILLNESS  OF  LADY  AUGUSTA 


465 


have  to  go  to  St.  Andrews  on  business,'  he  says  to  his 
sister  in  September,  '  I  have  not  the  heart  to  face  Scotland 
again  without  her.'  Months  had  now  passed,  and  no 
permanent  change  had  come  for  the  better.  In  the  early- 
autumn  they  returned  to  the  Deanery. 

In  another  letter  to  his  sister,  written  on  the  ist  of 
October,  he  says  : 

'  Our  stay  at  Norwood  has  been  anxious,  and  at  times 
depressing  —  but  still  happy.  By  closing  the  door  of 
one's  mind  absolutely  against  the  past  and  the  future,  the 
present  has  become  perfectly  endurable,  and  with  pleasures 
of  its  own.  I  have  written  five  out  of  the  ten  lectures 
which  will  make  up  my  next  volume  on  the  Jewish 
Church.  This  is  a  prodigious  relief,  and  has  been  a  won- 
derful distraction  and  assistance  to  me  during  these  long 
solitary  days  and  nights.' 

'  I  had  thought  of  coming  to  you,'  Stanley  writes  to 
Professor  Max  Miiller  from  Westminster  later  in  the 
same  month, 

'  but  did  not  like  to  leave  home,  where  we  are  again  — 
I  trust,  not  to  move.  I  know  not  what  report  to  give,  so 
very  weak,  so  suffering,  and  yet  such  unconquerable  cheer- 
fulness and  vivacity.  Mrs.  Drummond,  her  invaluable 
cousin,  is  with  us.  All  the  world  is  changed  for  me.  But 
I  find  it  best,  and  she  also  desires,  that  I  should  fill  up 
the  time  not  occupied  by  my  thoughts  and  work  for  her 
with  work  of  my  own  ;  and  so  I  struggle  on.' 

On  the  nth  of  October  Stanley  preached  in  West- 
minster Abbey.  On  the  following  day  the  Prince  of  Wales 
was  to  leave  England  for  India.    '  To-morrow,'  he  says, 

'  the  first  heir  of  the  English  throne  who  has  ever  visited 
the  Indian  Empire  starts  on  his  journey  to  those  distant 
regions  which  the  greatest  of  his  ancestors,  Alfred  the 
Great,  a  thousand  years  ago,  longed  to  explore.' 


'8  '  England  and  India,'  reprinted  in  Sermons  on  Special  Occasions. 
VOL.  II  H  H 


466 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


The  13th  of  October,  1874,  was  the  day  on  which  Lady- 
Augusta  had  first  taken  to  her  bed  in  Paris.  '  It  is 
astonishing  how  all  thought  and  desire  of  travel  or  of 
movement  has  for  me  passed  away,  and  how  the  life  from 
day  to  day  suffices.'  So  Stanley  writes  to  his  sister  on  the 
fatal  anniversary.  In  the  same  letter  he  describes  the  visit 
which  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  paid  to  Lady  Augusta  on 
the  day  of  his  leaving  England  : 

'  On  the  Sunday  night  we  had  a  message  to  say  that  the 
Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales  would  come  to  take  leave  of 
us  at  3.30  P.M.  the  next  day.  They  came  about  4  p.m., 
having  been  detained  by  the  members  of  the  family  coming 
to  Marlborough  House. 

'They  brought  all  the  five  children,  wishing,  the  Prince 
said,  to  have  them  all  with  him  as  long  as  possible. 

'They  all  came  up,  and  remained  about  twenty  minutes. 
Fanny  was  in  the  back  library,  and  the  children,  after 
being  for  a  few  minutes  with  Augusta,  who  was  delighted 
to  see  them,  went  to  her. 

'The  Prince  and  Princess  remained  with  Augusta  and 
me.  A.  talked  with  all  her  usual  animation.  They 
were  both  extremely  kind.  The  Princess  looked  inexpres- 
sibly sad.  There  was  nothing  much  said  of  interest,  chiefly 
talking  of  the  voyage,  &c.  As  I  took  him  downstairs,  he 
spoke  of  the  dangers  —  but  calmly  and  rationally,  saying 
that,  of  course,  the  precautions  must  be  left  to  those  about 
him.  I  said  to  him,  "  I  gave  you  my  parting  benediction 
in  the  Abbey  yesterday."  "  Yes,"  he  replied,  "  I  saw  it. 
Thank  you." 

'  Later  on  in  the  evening  Augusta  wished  me  to  telegraph 
our  renewed  thanks  and  renewed  good  wishes  to  the 
Castalia  at  Dover.  I  did  so,  and  at  1 1  p.m.  there  came 
back  a  telegram  from  him  :  "  Many  thanks  for  your 
kind  message.  God  bless  both  of  you !  Just  off  for 
Calais." 

'It  is  impossible  not  to 'be  affected  by  these  thoughtful 
acts  and  kind  words.  Augusta  was  very  much  gratified, 
and  none  the  worse  for  the  exertion.' 


1^  Lady  Frances  Baillie. 


CHAP.  XXVI       /LLiVESS  OF  LADV  AUGUSTA 


467 


For  a  moment  it  seemed  that  the  progress  of  the 
malady  might  be  arrested.  '  I  think,'  says  the  eager 
watcher  in  November,  '  that  there  is  more  strength  and 
more  interest  in  things.'  In  a  letter  dated  '  December  4th, 
1875,  Carlyle's  80th  birthday,'  he  reports  to  Pearson  that, 
'  on  the  whole,  she  is  better  (Jenner  says)  than  any  time 
since  our  return  from  France.  Judas  Maccabaeus  is  to 
have  a  lecture  to  himself.    He  is  a  delightful  person.' 

But  the  gleam  of  hope  died  away  before  the  end  of  the 
month.    '  I  sometimes  doubt,'  he  writes  to  Pearson, 

'whether,  when  I  see  her  so  constantly  suffering,  I  ought 
to  wish  her  stay  in  this  world  to  be  prolonged.  And  yet 
to  have  her,  even  in  this  state,  is  so  inexpressibly  precious 
and  consoling  that  I  cannot  endure  to  think  that  she  may 
be  lost  to  me.' 

The  anniversary  of  their  wedding-day  (December  22nd) 
was  clouded  by  dark  forebodings  of  the  future.  With 
thoughtful  kindness,  the  Queen  endeavoured  to  cheer 
Stanley  by  a  letter  which  she  remembered  to  send  him 
on  the  anniversary.  It  closes  with  a  warm  expression 
of  affection  for  Lady  Augusta  : 

*  And  now,  before  concluding,  let  me  once  more  try  to 
express  how  deeply  I  feel  for  you  !  But  it  is  almost  im- 
possible, for  I  cannot  distress  you  by  saying  too  much. 
My  sympathy  and  sorrow  are  too  great.  I  know  your 
beloved  one  so  well,  and  love  her  so  truly.  She  was  with 
me  on  those  two  fearful  nights  in  my  life  when  my  darling 
mother  and  when  my  precious  husband  were  taken.  She 
was  so  much  with  me  during  those  two  dreadful  first  years 
of  loneliness,  and  was  always  so  kind  and  helpful,  that  to 
think  of  her  now  as  so  suffering,  or  at  least  as  so  helpless, 
is  terrible.  May  our  Heavenly  Father,  who  has  sent  this 
fearful  trial,  support,  comfort,  and  sustain  you  ! ' 

On  January  ist,  1876,  there  came  an  alarming  change 
for  the  worse.  '  She  is  much  worse,'  he  tells  Pearson  in 
a  letter  written  on  January  2nd  : 

H  H  2 


468 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


'  A  new  phase  appeared  last  night,  which,  though  allevi- 
ated this  morning,  leaves  us  in  the  greatest  anxiety.  My 
dear  one  never  lost  consciousness.  She  is  quite  calm,  and 
down  to  late  yesterday  evening  was  listening  with  the 
greatest  interest  to  my  proof-sheets.' 

After  New  Year's  Day  the  fatal  end  was  only  a  question 
of  time.  Life  became  protracted  suffering.  Almost  at 
the  moment  when  hope  was  thus  suddenly  changed  for 
despair  Madame  Mohl  had  lost  her  husband.  '  I  had 
already  written,'  he  tells  de  Circourt  on  January  7th, 
1876, 

'to  Madame  Mohl  to  express  my  sympathy  on  hearing  of 
the  loss  of  one  whom  the  darkening  shadow  of  my  own 
life,  beginning  under  their  roof,  had  endeared  to  me  yet 
more  than  ever.  How  he  loved  and  admired  my  angel 
wife  !  How  she  loved  and  admired  him  !  Within  the  last 
few  days  my  anxiety  for  her  has  greatly  increased  with  her 
increasing  weakness.  I  will  not  say  that  my,  or  her,  hope 
has  entirely  failed,  for  as  long  as  that  life  remains  which 
has  hitherto  struggled  so  powerfully  against  this  wasting 
malady,  as  long  as  that  strong  will  continues  unbroken 
which  has  determined,  if  possible,  to  live  for  others,  even 
in  the  midst  of  her  own  sufferings,  so  long  hope  is  not  ex- 
tinct, nor  happiness.  She  retains  all  her  calmness  and 
cheerfulness  —  she  has  committed  to  me  all  her  wishes  — 
and  to  the  Supreme  Disposer  all  her  cares.  For  her  friends 
and  for  her  Queen  and  country  she  still  preserves  that  in- 
tense sympathy  which  was  the  characteristic  of  her  whole 
being.  In  her  enfeebled  state  I  dare  not  communicate  to 
her  the  tidings  of  Mohl's  death.  It  is  useless.  Her  affec- 
tion for  him,  her  tender  regard  for  his  widow,  are  not  the 
less  certain.  Your  expression  of  the  widely-spread  con- 
cern for  her  touches  me  deeply,  because  it  is  so  true,  and 
so  richly  deserved  ;  and  know  the  trial  through  which 
I  am  now  passing.  ...  I  still  labour  (it  is  her  wish  and 
my  solace),  and  I  have  now  reached  "the  days  of  Herod 
the  King."  ' 

'  I  write  on  this  matter  because  it  is  urgent,'  he  says  to 
the  Rev.  J.  Llewelyn  Davies  in  a  letter  on  the  Burials 
question. 


CHAP.  XXVI       ILLNESS  OF  LADY  AUGUSTA 


469 


'  but  my  heart  is  very  heavy.  All  hope  departed  on  New 
Year's  Day,  and  though  there  have  been  most  blessed 
moments  since  of  all  that  soothe,  elevate,  and  strengthen, 
the  suffering  is  now  so  great  that  we  cannot  but  pray  for  a 
speedy  release.  Yet,  as  she  said  to  me  in  one  of  her  fare- 
well messages,  "Do  not  despair  of  the  Church.  Abate  no 
jot  or  tittle  of  hope."  I  still  turn  now  and  then  to  these 
more  public  thoughts,  as  not  uncongenial  with  her  own 
best  aspirations.' 

The  sorrow  through  which  he  was  passing  deepened 
the  tenderness  of  his  sympathy  with  the  sorrows  of  others. 
To  Madame  Mohl  he  wrote  the  letter  on  her  recent 
bereavement,  to  which  he  refers  in  writing  to  M.  de 
Circourt  : 

'  Alas !  what  can  we  say  to  each  other }  When  I  was 
speaking  to  my  dear  Augusta,  she  said,  in  the  midst  of  her 
sufferings,  which  were  then  very  severe,  "  I  have  nothing 
left  but  this  crushed  and  miserable  body."  I  said  to  her, 
"  Yes,  you  have  something  besides.  There  is  your  undy- 
ing love."  She  looked  me  very  steadily  in  the  face,  and 
answered  with  all  her  strength,  "That  is  my  identity." 

'  And  that  is  what  I  feel,  and  what  you  may  feel  of  your 
dear  husband.  Whatever  was  best,  and  most  characteristi- 
cally best,  in  them  is  their  identity,  and  that  is  immortal. 
More  than  that  I  know  not :  with  that  I  am  satisfied. 

'  I  live  on,  and  sleep.  I  perform  my  indispensable 
duties.  But  the  sunshine,  the  spring,  the  energy  are  gone. 
Will  they  ever  return  to  me  Shall  I  be  able  to  draw  them 
from  the  memory  of  that  brilliant,  that  inexhaustible 
past ' 

In  January  1876  died  Lord  Amberley.    To  his  mother 
Stanley  wrote  the  following  letter  : 

'The  Deanery,  Westminster  :  January  iith,  1876, 

'  Dear  Lady  Russell,  —  Will  you  allow  one  broken  heart 
to  say  a  word  of  sympathy  to  another 

'The  life  of  my  life  is  ebbing  away.  The  hope  of  your 
life  is  gone.  She,  I  trust,  will  find  in  the  Fountain  of  all 
Love  the  love  in  which  she  has  lived  on  earth.  He,  I  trust,  ^ 


470 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


will  find  in  the  Fountain  of  all  Light  the  truth  after  which 
he  sought  on  earth.  May  God  help  us  both  in  this  sore 
extremity ! 

'  Ever  yours  most  truly, 

'A.  P.  Stanley.' 

To  Dr.  Liddell  he  wrote  on  January  i6th,  1876 : 

'  I  knew  that  you  would  feel  for  us.  Yo7i  joined  our 
hands  in  one,  and  gave  us  the  blessing  which  has  been  ful- 
filled a  hundredfold  into  our  bosoms.  To  have  had  such 
a  mother  and  such  a  wife  was,  perhaps,  too  much  for  one 
man's  existence.  I  have  two  most  loving  sisters,  and  many 
faithful  friends,  who  will,  I  know,  sustain  me  when  the  blow 
at  last  falls.  But  the  glory  of  my  life  will  have  departed, 
and  what  remains  of  it  will  be,  perhaps  ought  to  be,  but  a 
gathering  up  of  the  fragments  of  the  past. 

'Since  that  fatal  New  Year's  Day  the  whole  aspect  of 
her  position  has  been  changed.  She  looks  not  now  life- 
wards,  but  deathwards,  and  the  fountains  of  her  great  heart 
seem  broken  up,  and,  while  her  speech  continued,  over- 
flowed with  love  and  wisdom. 

'  Now  it  is  sadly  choked  ;  but  her  sweet  smile  still  lin- 
gers, and  her  spirit  is  unbroken,  though  almost  all  else  is 
suffering  or  dead.    How  long  it  will  last  no  one  knows ! ' 

In  the  sick-room  it  was  felt  that  Lady  Augusta's  death 
would  be  a  merciful  release  to  her  sufferings.  Her  weak- 
ness increased  daily  as  her  difficulty  of  taking  nourishment 
became  greater.  Her  power  of  articulation  failed,  her  voice 
grew  feebler,  her  speech  more  and  more  inaudible.  By 
her  side  Stanley  worked,  day  by  day,  at  his  lectures,  read- 
ing to  her,  when  she  was  able  to  bear  it,  chiefly  from  the 
Psalms  and  Isaiah,  or  placing  some  simple  hymn,  some 
Christian  text,  within  her  sight.  '  My  dear  wife,'  he  tells 
M.  de  Circourt,  '  reminds  me  of  a  line  in  Michael  Angelo, 
which  you  doubtless  know  in  Italian,  but  which  I  can  only 
quote  in  English  :  "The  more  the  marble  wastes,  the  more 
the  statue  grows."  '  Throughout  her  protracted  sufferings 
she  showed  the  same  kindly  consideration  for  others  which 


CHAP.  XXVI       ILLNESS  OF  LADY  AUGUSTA 


had  been  so  marked  a  feature  in  her  life.  At  an  earlier 
stage  of  her  illness  a  crowd  of  children  gathered  to  see 
her  slow  and  difficult  removal  to  and  from  the  carriage ; 
but  she  only  desired  that  the  servants  might  not  be  hurried, 
as  it  gave  the  little  ones  so  much  pleasure  to  watch.  Of 
the  nurses  she  entreated  pardon  for  her  impatience.  '  Let 
no  one,'  she  said,  '  come  to  my  funeral  at  any  risk  to  him- 
self—  not  even  my  own  brother.' 

The  end  was  steadily  approaching,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  choose  the  spot  where  she  was  to  be  buried.  Dunferm- 
line was,  as  she  herself  said  to  her  husband,  '  too  far  from 
you.'  Her  own  wish  was  that  she  might  be  buried  in  the 
Abbey  or  near  its  walls.  To  her  inexpressible  comfort 
the  Queen  desired  that  the  Chapel  of  Henry  VH.  should 
be  her  burying-place.  'Thank  the  dear  Queen,'  she  said 
to  Mrs.  Drummond.  '  I  shall  be  near  him  now.  I  shall 
be  with  him  whenever  he  takes  people  round  the  Abbey, 
whenever  he  is  at  his  duty.  I  shall  be  where  the  dear 
babes  were  christened.' 

While  Stanley  hesitated  to  place  her  body  beside  the 
tomb  of  the  Due  de  Montpensier,  his  doubts  were  removed 
by  a  letter  from  the  Comte  de  Paris.  'There  came,'  he 
tells  M.  de  Circourt, 

'a  letter  full  of  affection  and  sympathy  from  the  Comte 
de  Paris,  which  encouraged  me  to  choose  this  spot,  a  choice 
which  he  has  since  confirmed.  It  is  congenial  to  her 
fidelity  to  that  family,  and  to  her  profound  affection  for 
France,  the  country  of  her  education.' 

On  February  26th  the  Queen  came  to  see  Lady  Augusta 
for  the  last  time.  The  end  was  now  so  near  that  it  could 
almost  be  counted  by  hours.    On  the  night  before  Ash 

25  The  special  reference  is  to  the  children  of  Lady  Augusta's  brother, 
Thomas  Ci  uce.  Their  names,  '  Charlie,'  '  Elsie,'  and  '  Augusta,'  continually 
occur  m  her  letters. 


472 


UFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


Wednesday  (March  ist),  as  Stanley  wrote  to  his  old  pupil 
and  successor,  the  present  Dean  of  Westminster, 

'  she*pronounced  my  name  for  the  last  time.  This  morn- 
ing, for  the  last  time,  in  answer  to  my  urgent  appeal,  she 
opened  those  dear  eyes  upon  me.' 

It  was  on  Ash  Wednesday,  the  same  day  on  which 
Stanley's  mother  had  died,  that  his  wife,  after  he  had  read 
to  her  for  the  last  time,  passed  away  in  her  sleep.  '  On 
this  same  dark  day  the  two  great  lights  of  my  life  have 
gone  out,'  he  says  to  Pearson  in  a  letter  written  on  March 
1st,  entreating  him  to  come  at  once  to  the  Deanery.  The 
two  chief  sorrows  of  his  life  are  commemorated  in  lines 
that  were  written  shortly  before  his  own  end  : 

0  Day  of  Ashes  !  twice  for  me 

Thy  mournful  title  hast  thou  earned, 
For  twice  my  life  of  life  by  thee 

Has  been  to  dust  and  ashes  turned. 
No  need,  dark  day,  that  thou  should'st  borrow 

The  trappings  of  a  formal  sorrow  ; 
In  thee  are  cherish'd,  fresh  and  deep, 

Long  memories  that  cannot  sleep. 

My  mother !  on  that  fatal  day, 

O'er  seas  and  deserts  far  apart, 
The  guardian  genius  passed  away 

That  nursed  my  very  mind  and  heart ; 
The  oracle  that  never  failed, 

The  faith  serene  that  never  quailed ; 
The  kindred  soul  that  knew  my  thought 

Before  its  speech  or  form  was  wrought. 

My  wife  —  when  clos'd  that  fatal  night, 
My  being  turned  once  more  to  stone 

1  watched  her  spirit  take  its  flight. 
And  find  myself  again  alone. 


CHAP.  XXVI 


FUNERAL  OF  LADY  AUGUSTA 


473 


The  sunshine  of  the  heart  was  dead, 

The  glory  of  the  home  was  fled  ; 
The  smile  that  made  the  dark  world  bright, 

The  love  that  made  all  duty  light. 

Now  that  these  scenes  of  bliss  are  gone, 

Now  that  the  long  years  roll  away. 
The  two  Ash  Wednesdays  blend  in  one  — 

One  sad  yet  almost  festal  day ; 
The  emblem  of  that  union  blest, 

When  lofty  souls  together  rest, 
Star  differing  each  from  star  in  glory, 

Yet  telling  each  its  own  high  story. 

When  this  day  bids  us  from  within 

Look  out  on  human  strifes  and  storms, 
The  worst  man's  hope,  the  best  man's  sin, 

The  world's  bare  arts.  Faith's  hollow  forms  — 
One  answer  comes  in  accents  dear, 

Yet  as  the  piercing  sunbeam  clear, 
The  secret  of  the  better  life 

Read  by  my  Mother,  and  my  Wife. 

On  Thursday,  March  9th,  Lady  Augusta  was  buried  in 
Henry  the  Seventh's  Chapel  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
Throughout  the  interval  between  her  death  and  her  funeral 
innumerable  letters  of  sympathy  and  condolence  poured  in 
upon  him  from  every  side.  '  It  is  impossible,'  he  says,  '  not 
to  be  buoyed  up  for  the  time  by  this  flood  of  sympathy 
and  love  for  her.'  To  another  friend  he  writes:  'The 
knowledge  that  my  friends,  my  dear,  unfaiHng  friends,  knew 
what  she  was,  and  is,  must  be  my  enduring  solace.'  He 
found  a  relief  from  solitary  thought  in  arranging  the  details 
of  the  impressive  funeral,  which  was  attended  by  persons 
of  every  rank  and  every  Church,  from  the  Queen  to  the 
humblest  of  the  poor  in  Westminster.  '  Do  not  pity  me  for 
Thursday,'  he  bids  a  friend.    '  What  could  be  more  sustain- 


474 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


ing  and  inspiring  than  such  a  tribute  rendered  to  the  life 
of  my  life,  the  heart  of  my  heart  ? '  Pearson's  absence  was, 
he  tells  him, 

'  the  only  flaw  in  this  day,  which  is  not  to  me  anything  so 
much  as  the  crowning  honour  of  our  dear  angel.  The 
Queen  was,  with  the  three  Princesses,  in  the  gallery  the 
whole  time,  and,  full  of  kind  feeling,  only  thought  it  too 
long,  in  which  I  partly  agreed  with  her.  But  the  order, 
the  solemnity,  the  majesty  of  the  whole,  were  what  our 
beloved  one  would  have  wished. 

'  I  gave  the  blessing  at  the  end,  beginning  this  weary 
life  again  without  the  sunshine  that  made  it  tolerable. 

'  The  pall-bearers  were  the  Duke  of  Westminster  (for 
Westminster),  Lord  Shaftesbury  (for  philanthropy),  the 
M.P.  for  Dunfermline  (for  Dunfermline),^^  Caird  (for  the 
Scottish  Church),  Stoughton  (for  the  Nonconformists), 
Motley  (for  the  Americans),  Browning  for  literature 
(Tennyson  being  unable  to  come).' 

'  For  me,'  he  writes  to  M.  de  Circourt, 

'there  is  a  consolation  in  the  full  tide  of  sympathy  which 
flows  in  from  every  rank,  and  every  country,  and  every 
Church.  But  the  sad  future  still  remains  of  my  work  to  be 
carried  on  without  the  support  which  hitherto  carried  me 
through  all  obstacles.  .  .  .  Was  ever  mortal  man  so  blessed 
with  such  a  mother  and  with  such  a  wife  Was  ever  a 
union  of  twelve  years  so  rich  in  incidents  of  extraordinary 
interest  and  happiness  ?  May  God  give  me  grace  to  use 
the  few  years  that  may  still  be  granted  worthily  of  such  a 
past  —  worthily  of  the  hope  of  reunion  with  two  such 
angelic  spirits  ! ' 

21  Mr.  Campbell  Bannerman,  who  represented  the  constituency  in  which 
Broom-hall  and  Dunfermline  are  situated. 


DEAN  STANLEY  AT  WORK  AT  HIS  DESK  AT  THE  DEANERY 


CHAP,  xxvn    EFFECT  OF  HIS  WIFE'S  DEATH  475 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
1876-80 

THE  EFFECT  UPON  STANLEY  OF  HIS  WIFE'S  DEATH  — THE 
THIRD  VOLUME  OF  'LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE 
JEWISH  CHURCH'  — TOUR  IN  PORTUGAL,  1876  — RENEWAL 
OF  HIS  WORK  AT  WESTMINSTER  UNDER  CHANGED  CON- 
DITIONS—HIS DAILY  LIFE  — HIS  LITERARY  WORK— THE 
QUEEN'S  ASSUMPTION  OF  THE  IMPERIAL  TITLE  — THE 
EASTERN  QUESTION  — THE  DEATH  OF  VICTOR  EMANUEL 
AND  PIO  NONO,  1878  — THE  BURIALS  BILL,  1877— THE 
SCOTTISH  CHURCH  AND  MR.  GLADSTONE  —  LECTURES, 
ADDRESSES,  AND  SERMONS  —  DEATHS  OF  MR.  MOTLEY, 
MISS  LOUISA  STANLEY,  SIR  GILBERT  SCOTT,  THE  DUCH- 
ESS OF  ARGYLL,  MR.  RUSSELL  GURNEY,  AND  EARL  RUS- 
SELL—VISIT TO  AMERICA,  1878  — ITS  SUCCESS —' MEMOIR 
OF  EDWARD  AND  CATHERINE  STANLEY,'  1879  — TOUR  IN 
ITALY,  1879  — DEATH  OF  MARY  STANLEY,  1879 

Stanley  never  entirely  recovered  from  the  shock  of  his 
wife's  death.  The  sun  of  his  life  was  set,  and  the  shadow 
of  a  great  grief  darkened  the  rest  of  his  career.  He  re- 
turned to  his  house  from  the  funeral  of  Lady  Augusta  in 
Westminster  Abbey  to  be,  for  the  remaining  five  years  of 
life,  with  rare  gleams  of  his  former  happiness,  'a  bereaved 
and  somewhat  forlorn  man.'  '  I  have  now  crossed,'  he 
writes  to  his  friend  Edward  Lear,  '  the  summit  of  my  life. 
All  that  remains  can  but  be  a  long  or  short  descent,  cheered 
by  the  memories  of  the  past.'  At  times  he  even  doubted 
whether  it  would  not  be  best  for  him  to  leave  Westminster. 
'With  her  departure,'  he  tells  Mrs.  Drummond,  'the  glory 
of  the  Westminster  life,  if  not  its  usefulness,  is  brought  to 
an  end  —  the  mine  worked  out,  and  no  energy  to  continue 
the  old  routine.' 


476 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


Loving  relations  took  care  that  his  home  should  never 
be  wholly  desolate  ;  old  friends  rallied  round  him  ;  new 
friendships  were  still  to  be  formed.  His  mental  vigour 
was  not  perceptibly  impaired,  nor  the  warmth  of  his  enthu- 
siasms chilled.  He  grew  richer  in  his  stores  of  anecdote 
and  reminiscences.  Something  of  the  vivacity,  brightness, 
and  elasticity  of  former  years  returned.  His  youthful 
love  of  writing  verse  was  renewed,  and  exercised  on  all 
occasions,  both  grave  and  gay.  His  duties  towards  the 
Abbey  were  diligently  discharged ;  his  interest  in  public 
events  revived,  and  he  watched  with  his  old  eagerness  the 
progress  of  the  questions  which  agitated  the  Church.  He 
relaxed  none  of  his  former  literary  energies.  Still,  day 
after  day,  he  worked  at  the  desk  in  the  library  of  the 
Deanery  with  his  wife's  bust  placed  on  the  table  at  which 
she  used  to  sit.  His  instinct  to  stand  by  the  weak  was  as 
strong,  and  his  antagonism  to  what  he  considered  narrow- 
ness and  intolerance  as  fearless,  as  they  ever  were  in  his 
most  vigorous  days.  If  persons  or  causes  were,  as  he 
believed,  suffering  injustice,  no  consideration  of  prudence 
kept  him  silent.  Though,  as  he  told  Pearson  in  1877,  his 
'  fighting  days '  were  over,  his  eye  would  still  kindle  at  the 
suspicion  of  a  wrong,  and  sparkle  at  the  first  mention  of  a 
heroic  deed. 

His  sympathy  with  sorrow  in  every  form  was  deepened 
in  its  tenderness,  and  his  interest  in  his  humble  fellow- 
countrymen  was  widened  in  its  range.  Here,  above  all,  he 
felt  that  the  spirit  of  his  wife  was  with  him.  His  desire  to 
help  working-men  had  always  taken  a  practical  shape.  He 
had  done  his  utmost  to  promote  coffee-houses  and  libraries  ; 
he  had  served  as  president  of  the  Working  Men's  Club  and 
Institute  Union  ;  he  had  endeavoured  by  every  means  in 
his  power  to  extend  to  them  the  inspiring  and  elevating 
influences  of  the  Abbey.     Now,  however,  he  found  for 


CHAP.  XXVII    EFFECT  OF  HIS  WIFE'S  DEATH  477 


himself  a  parish  in  the  world  of  Westminster,  carrying  on 
with  redoubled  energy  his  work  among  the  people  of  the 
neighbourhood  —  trying,  as  Lady  Augusta  had  tried,  to 
brighten  their  lives  by  the  annual  flower-shows  in  the 
Abbey  gardens,  or  by  conducting  them  over  the  Abbey,  or 
by  entertaining  them  in  the  Deanery  at  tea.  It  became 
his  delight,  to  a  greater  degree  than  before,  to  minister  to 
the  needs  of  suffering  friends  at  the  Hospital,  to  support 
every  effort  made  to  raise  the  unhappy  women  who  were 
collected  at  the  Refuge,  to  visit  the  almshouses  in  Fenti- 
man's  Lane,  on  the  Surrey  side  of  the  river,  even 
occasionally  to  conduct  short  mission-services  in  the  low 
lodging-houses  of  the  back  streets  of  Westminster. 

His  genius  for  friendship  burned  with  a  softer,  if  not  a 
brighter,  flame.  His  face  still  lighted  up  at  the  apj^roach 
of  a  friend,  and  his  hand  never  failed  in  that  characteristic 
clasp  which  gave  such  warmth  to  his  welcome.  His  time 
and  thought  were  as  freely  spent  in  the  service  of  others. 
He  watched  the  career  of  his  friends  with  the  same  affec- 
tionate eagerness,  untiring  in  his  efforts  to  gain  for  them 
the  recognition  or  the  rewards  which  he  believed  that  they 
deserved,  seeking  and  making  every  possible  opportunity 
to  help  them  forward  and  bring  them  into  notice.  His 
sympathy,  his  sound  counsel,  his  fertility  of  resource,  were 
offered  with  all  his  old  readiness,  not  only  to  friends,  but  to 
strangers,  whose  only  claim  upon  him  lay  in  their  anxieties 
or  troubles. 

No  appeal  for  his  advice  was  ever  neglected.  In  the 
effort  to  remove  the  difficulties  of  those  who  sought  his  aid, 
he  spared  neither  time  nor  labour.  Lengthy  letters  were 
often  followed  by  protracted  interviews.  If  he  did  not  always 
convince  those  who  applied  to  him,  there  were  few  whom 
his  sympathetic  insight  into  the  peculiar  circumstances  of 
each  special  case  did  not  encourage  and  console.  From 


478 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


every  quarter  friends  and  strangers  had  recourse  to  him  in 
their  perplexities,  and  tlie  frequency  of  such  appeals  in- 
creased as  he  drew  towards  the  close  of  his  life.  Two 
instances  out  of  many  must  suffice.  The  first  is  the  case 
of  a  lady  who  was  troubled  with  doubts  of  the  central  Gos- 
pel truth  of  the  Resurrection  ;  the  second  is  the  case  of  a 
clergyman  who  doubted  whether  he  could  conscientiously 
remain  in  Holy  Orders.  Both  had  recourse  to  him  as  total 
strangers  ;  and  in  both  cases  he  succeeded  in  removing 
their  difficulties  by  his  written  or  his  spoken  words.  The 
lady,  to  use  the  words  of  Archbishop  Tait,  to  whom  she 
related  the  incident,  'had  her  doubts  removed,  her  faith 
strengthened,  and  her  heart  comforted.'  The  clergyman 
retained  his  Orders,  and  was  able  to  lead  a  happy  and  a 
useful  life. 

In  the  first  case,  the  following  passage  from  one  of  his 
letters  throws  valuable  light  upon  Stanley's  own  faith  : 

'  I  think  the  Resurrection  can  be  historically  proved, 
and  satisfactorily  so  ;  but  I  particularly  wish  you  would  try 
and  dwell  on  John  xxi.  It  seems  to  me  it  must  satisfy 
your  longing.  It  appears  to  me  quite  impossible  to  doubt 
that  the  whole  occurrence  is  exactly  and  accurately  de- 
scribed. It  appears  to  me  impossible  to  doubt  that  it  ivas 
the  Lord  Himself,  and  that  He  was  known  by  the  disciples 
as  the  Lord  ;  as  strong  a  proof  as  can  be  given  by  any- 
thing outside  of  one's  own  internal  convictions  for  the  life 
of  the  person  living  after  death,  and  the  reunion  with  those 
whom  we  have  known  and  loved  on  earth.  As  our  Saviour 
Himself  said  of  the  general  proof  of  the  Resurrection  from 
the  idea  that  "  God  is  not  a  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the 
living,"  so  we  may  say  of  the  deepening  of  that  proof  in 
the  Christian  religion,  "  Christ  is  not  a  Christ  of  the  dead, 
but  of  the  living."  ' 

The  following  extract  from  his  first  letter  to  the  clergy- 
man is  also  interesting  for  its  allusion  to  his  own  position 
in  the  Church  of  England  : 


CHAP.  XXVII    EFFECT  OF  HIS  WIFE'S  DEATH 


479 


'  Perhaps  I  may  venture  to  say  thus  much : 
'  I  have  known  one  or  two  instances  in  which  those 
oppressed  like  yourself  have  relinquished  their  position 
as  clergymen,  and  have  afterwards  seen  good  cause  to 
repent. 

'  I  have  known,  also,  others  whom  I  have  persuaded,  or 
who  have  been  persuaded,  to  remain,  and  who  have  found 
comfort  in  so  doing.  I  may  add  that  I  myself  (though,  as 
you  know,  I  have  entered  much  into  these  subjects,  and 
have,  in  the  judgment  of  many  excellent  men,  perhaps  of 
the  majority  of  my  own  profession,  deviated  widely  from 
the  popular  views  entertained  of  theology  and  religion) 
have  found  no  practical  difficulty  in  maintaining  what,  in 
my  humble  opinion,  is  at  once  an  honourable  and  a  tenable 
position.  There  is  so  much  still  left  in  common  with  those 
called  "  orthodox  "  —  there  is  so  much  that  they  have  either 
abandoned  or  not  apprehended  which  is  open  to  me  —  that 
the  field  of  religious  teaching  still  seems  to  me  unexhausted.' 

When  Stanley  was  thus  asked  to  remove  the  difficulties 
of  others,  he  responded  to  the  call  with  all  his  old  power, 
and,  perhaps,  with  an  added  tenderness.  It  was  in  meeting 
the  smaller  and  more  ordinary  demands  of  daily  life  that 
the  change  was  chiefly  shown.  In  congenial  society  he 
sometimes  talked  with  the  animation  and  cheerfulness  of 
earlier  years.  In  his  foreign  tours,  his  expeditions  to 
scenes  of  interest  in  England  or  Scotland,  and,  above  all, 
his  visit  to  the  United  States,  he  threw  himself  with 
much  of  his  former  enthusiasm  and  of  his  old  capacity  for 
keen  enjoyment.  But,  even  in  his  most  cheerful  moments, 
he  was  never  quite  himself,  never  able  to  enter  eagerly 
into  ordinary  occupations.  '  I  cannot  preach  now,'  he  said. 
'  I  can  manage  to  make  a  sermon  for  a  special  occasion. 
But  a  common  sermon  —  no  !  I  cannot  do  that  now.'  His 
thoughts  were  constantly  with  the  lost  treasure  that  lay 
beneath  the  stone  by  which  he  so  often  stood  silently  gaz- 
ing. Yet  the  very  richness  of  his  memories  of  his  dead 
wife  brought  a  peculiar  happiness,  and  added  a  constant 


48o 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


sense  of  spiritual  companionship,  which  lent  a  new  touch 
of  pathetic  beauty  to  his  closing  years. 

Every  ordinary  event  of  life  was  at  first  charged  with 
a  remembrance  of  his  loss.  The  protracted  anguish  of 
suspense  was  as  nothing  compared  to  the  agony  of  the 
final  blow.  'All  the  anxieties,'  he  tells  the  Queen  in 
March  1876,  'and  cares,  and  hopes,  and  fears  of  the  last 
year  and  a  half  seem  to  me  like  unmixed  happiness,  com- 
pared with  that  desolation  and  sorrow  which  have  now 
fallen  upon  me.' 

On  March  13th,  1876,  he  pours  out  his  sorrow  to  the  same 
fellow-mourner,  who  had  deeply  loved  Lady  Augusta,  and 
whose  sympathy,  expressed  in  almost  daily  letters,  was,  as 
he  says,  his  'unfailing  comfort.'  Writing  to  the  Queen  of 
the  recent  Life  of  Norman  Macleod,  he  says  : 

'  I  shall  always  associate  the  book  with  her.  The  whole 
of  the  first  volume,  which  was  sent  to  me  in  the  proof- 
sheets,  she  heard  with  the  greatest  interest ;  the  second 
arrived  after  she  was  unable  to  follow  any  continuous  read- 
ing. But  I  felt  so  strongly  her  connection  with  it  that, 
being  very  urgently  pressed  to  write  a  review  of  it  in  the 
"  Times  "  as  soon  as  it  was  published,  I  consented  ;  and 
knowing  that  any  day  "the  night"  might  come,  when  I 
could  do  no  work  of  that  kind,  I  wrote  it  instantly  and  sent 
it  off,  and,  strange  to  say,  it  appeared  in  the  very  same 
number  of  the  "Times  "  ^  which  announced  her  death.' 

It  was,  perhaps,  fortunate  for  him  that  he  was,  at  the 
moment  when  the  blow  fell  upon  him,  immersed  in  work. 
In  its  resumption  he  found  the  best  solace  to  his  grief,  and 
paid  the  truest  tribute  to  his  wife's  memory.  '  On  Monday 
next,'  he  tells  the  Queen  in  a  letter  written  on  April  7th, 
1876, 

'the  Monday  in  Passion  Week  —  I  preach  again  for  the 
first  time.    It  will  be  at  Sonning,^  where  I  have  preached 


1  March  2nd,  1876. 


2  Hugh  Pearson  was  Vicar  of  Sonning. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


'THE  JEWISH  CHURCH' 


on  that  day  for  thirty  years  without  interruption,  except  in 
1853,  and  1862,  when  I  was  in  the  East.  And  then  will 
come  the  still  harder  trial  of  preaching  in  the  Abbey  on 
Easter  Sunday.  But  I  must  begin  some  time ;  and  I 
could  not  have  a  better  day  than  that  which  speaks  of 
immortality  and  hope  —  and  it  is  my  official  duty  to  preach 
on  that  day.' 

His  third  volume  of  the  '  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the 
Jewish  Church '  was  also  passing  through  the  press,  and 
was  published  in  September  1876.  The  work  itself,  written 
by  his  wife's  bedside,  and  read  aloud  to  her  as  long  as  she 
could  bear  the  effort  of  listening,  had  been  'the  solicitude 
and  solace  of  her  latest  days.'  To  her  'beloved  memory' 
it  was  dedicated,  with  the  prayer  '  that  its  aim  might  not  be 
altogether  unworthy  of  her  sustaining  love,  her  inspiring 
courage,  and  her  never-failing  faith  in  the  enlargement  of 
the  Church  and  the  triumph  of  all  truth.'  With  it  he 
brought  to  a  conclusion  the  series  of  Lectures  in  which  his 
picturesque  sensibility  had  quickened  into  life  the  long  suc- 
cession of  patriarchs,  kings,  prophets,  and  national  heroes. 
In  spite  of  undisputed  defects,  his  history  helped  to  work 
the  same  revolution  in  the  popular  view  of  Scriptural  char- 
acters which  '  Sinai  and  Palestine '  had  been  instrumental 
in  producing  with  regard  to  Scriptural  scenes.  His  vivid 
portraiture  of  the  human  actors  in  the  Old  Testament  was 
the  best  antidote  to  the  mythical  and  mystical  school  of 
thought  which  treated  them  as  the  fabulous  creations  of 
fervid  religious  imagination  ;  while  the  evidence  which  he 
accumulates  of  pervasive  historical  truth  affords  the  best 
answer  to  the  scepticism  of  those  who,  because  of  trifling 
inaccuracies  in  the  narrative,  rejected  the  whole  history. 

The  period  comprised  in  the  third  volume  of  the  'Jewish 
Church '  includes  the  five  centuries  that  elapsed  between  the 
Babylonish  Captivity  and  the  opening  of  the  Christian  age. 
It  is  the  close  of  the  old  religious  era;  it  is  also  the  prelude 
VOL.  II  1 1 


482 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


of  the  new.  It  is  the  epilogue  of  one  reUgious  drama  and 
the  prologue  of  another.  To  most  persons  the  ground 
which  the  volume  traversed  was  little  known.  The  stream 
of  sacred  history,  after  running  through  open  and  familiar 
channels,  flows,  as  it  were,  underground,  and  reappears  on 
the  surface  changed  in  form,  scope,  current,  and  direction. 
But  the  Exile,  the  ruin  of  the  Babylonian  power,  the  tran- 
sient glory  of  the  Persian  rule,  the  restoration  of  the 
Hebrews,  the  contact  with  foreign  nations,  the  splendid 
outburst  of  national  heroism  under  Judas  Maccabaeus,  the 
ascendency  of  the  Asmonean  dynasty — all  combine  to  form 
a  story  which,  for  variety  of  detail,  richness  of  picturesque 
episode,  and  lasting  importance  of  results,  can  hardly  be 
surpassed. 

Stanley  himself  considered  that  the  interest  of  his  sub- 
ject was  inferior  to  that  of  the  preceding  Lectures.  'The 
interest,'  he  says  to  M.  de  Circourt,  '  is  less  than  that  of 
previous  epochs,  and  I  doubt  not  that  the  whole  work  will 
bear  the  marks  of  the  terrible  calamity  under  the  weight 
of  which  it  was  composed.'  To  this,  indeed,  the  career  and 
character  of  Judas  Maccabaeus  were  an  exception.  Shortly 
after  the  publication  of  the  volume  he  was  at  Oxford. 
There  he  met  his  old  friend  and  travelling  companion,  the 
Rev.  A.  G.  Butler.  The  conversation  turned  on  the  third 
volume  of  the  'Jewish  Church,'  and  Mr.  Butler  thanked 
him  for  his  vivid  picture  of  the  noble  character  of  Judas 
Maccabaeus.  '  Yes,'  said  Stanley, '  I  have  done  my  best  for 
him ' ;  and  then,  drawing  his  slight  form  together,  and 
looking  up,  as  if  he  saw  the  mighty  shade  of  the  Jewish 
patriot  approaching,  he  added,  'I  hope  he  will  be  kind  to 
me  when  we  meet  in  another  world.' 

But  if  the  period  handled  in  the  third  volume  excited 
less  interest  in  Stanley  than  its  predecessors,  it  was  free 
from  the  exceptional  difficulties  of  the  earlier  portions,  and 


CHAP.  XXVII  '  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH' 


483 


even  possessed  some  special  advantages  for  his  method  of 
historical  treatment.  It  was  less  familiar,  and,  to  all  but 
professed  students,  enjoyed  the  charm  of  novelty.  It  was 
less  sacred,  and  therefore  Stanley  was  able  to  clothe  with 
flesh  and  blood  the  figures  of  his  narrative,  and  to  present 
his  drama  with  some  of  the  breadth  and  variety  of  human 
life,  and  yet  to  escape  the  charge  that  he  was  forgetting 
the  unique  character  of  the  Old  Testament  narrative.  It 
was  also  more  definite  and  certain.  Portions  of  the  subject 
bristled  with  critical  difficulties  ;  but  there  was  no  longer 
the  same  continuous  necessity  to  weigh  the  value  of  the 
evidence,  or  to  decide  between  its  real  and  its  poetical  ele- 
ments. Standing  on  firmer  ground,  he  no  longer  envelops 
Hebrew  traditions  in  an  atmosphere  of  sentiment,  which  is 
too  reverent  to  reject  them  as  fictions,  and  too  truthful  to 
accept  them  in  their  entirety  as  facts.  And,  finally,  the 
width  of  the  range  that  he  traverses  gave  him  scope  for  the 
exercise  of  some  of  his  most  characteristic  gifts  as  a  historian. 
His  mind  was  not  critical,  but  constructive  ;  it  was  syntheti- 
cal rather  than  analytical.  As  he  glanced  over  the  far- 
reaching  vista,  his  eye  not  only  detected  the  literary  value 
of  isolated  facts  imbedded  in  the  involved  paragraphs  of 
German  historians,  or  the  picturesque  capacity  of  forgotten 
legends  and  traditions  which  lay  buried  in  the  masses 
accumulated  by  industrious  antiquaries  ;  it  also  gathered  the 
whole  country  into  focus,  generalised  its  configuration, 
marked  the  great  watersheds  from  which  descend  the 
currents  of  national  life,  and  noted  the  commanding  peaks 
which  dominate  and  determine  the  national  character. 

The  volume  opens  with  an  account  of  Babylon  in  the 
days  of  its  greatest  glory,  '  the  golden  city  presided  over  by 
a  magnificent  oppressor.'  The  glowing  description  affords 
a  striking  proof  of  Stanley's  literary  gifts  —  his  quick  per- 
ception of  telling  contrasts,  his  dramatic  force  of  narrative, 


484 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1876 


his  imaginative  realisation  of  men  and  things,  his  deft 
mastery  of  detail,  his  bold  aird  dexterous  use  of  local  colour- 
ing, his  artistic  talent  in  grouping  and  combining  facts  into 
pictures.  Equally  fine  in  their  different  ways  are  the 
portrait  of  Judas  Maccabasus  and  the  spirited  account  of 
his  battles,  or  the  discriminating  appreciation  of  the  life  and 
work  of  Socrates.  More  remarkable  than  these  separate 
illustrations  of  literary  gifts  is  the  effect  of  the  work  viewed 
as  a  whole.  Stanley's  realising,  vivifying  touch  restores,  as 
living  persons  and  real  events,  characters  and  scenes  which 
were  mere  names  and  forms  and  shadows.  The  scattered 
threads  of  Hebrew  history  are  gathered  together,  the 
tangled  skeins  of  intrigue,  discord,  and  controversy  are 
unravelled,  and  the  whole  material  is  woven  together  into 
the  fabric  of  a  picturesque,  vivid  narrative,  which  is  often 
powerful  and  always  interesting. 

The  third  volume  of  the  '  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church ' 
was  published  when  Stanley  had  left  England  for  a  tour 
in  Portugal.  '  In  September,'  he  writes  to  Madame  Mohl 
from  the  Deanery  in  August  1876, 

'  I  go  for  a  month  to  Portugal.  I  wish  to  try  for  a  few 
weeks  the  effect  of  being  where  my  beloved  one  was  not 
with  me.  But  I  agree  with  you  that  there  is  no  place 
where  I  am  really  happy  —  if  happiness  it  can  be  called  — 
except  in  this,  her  own  home,  with  her  presence  constantly 
before  me. 

'  If  in  October  I  return  through  Paris,  I  will  see  you. 
But  I  almost  doubt  whether  I  could  face  the  prospect  of 
inhabiting  again  those  dear  rooms.' 

His  companion  was  Mr.  Victor  Williamson,  of  whom, 
at  the  end  of  the  tour,  he  writes,  '  he  has  been  most 
excellent  —  so  attentive,  so  interested  in  everything,  never, 
with  all  the  trials  from  A.  P.  S.  and  from  the  Spaniards, 
losing  his  temper  for  an  instant.'  The  travellers  started 
from  Southampton.    '  It  is  impossible,'  he  says. 


CHAP.  XXVII  TOUR  IN  PORTUGAL 


485 


'  to  imagine  anything  more  luxurious,  and  it  is  inexpressibly 
touching  to  see  in  the  manner  of  the  captain  and  the  steward, 
without  saying  a  word,  that  it  is  because  they  know  the 
circumstances.  It  makes  me  feel  in  every  act  of  kindness 
that  it  is  she  who  still  guards  and  watches  over  me.  I 
sometimes  hunger  for  home  and  for  those  duties  which 
seemed  to  bring  her  so  near ;  and  yet  even  here  I  find  her 
also.' 

At  first  the  experiment  of  travelling  failed.  Portugal 
seemed  to  him  to  be  a  'marvellously  uninteresting  country' ; 
the  charm  of  seeing  new  places  had  vanished  ;  the  only 
result  to  be  hoped  for  was  the  increased  zest  and  ardour 
with  which  he  would  return  to  his  duties.  '  How  thankful 
I  am  that  I  did  not  undertake  America  ! '  *  I  have  read,' 
he  tells  his  sister,  turning  once  more  to  the  favourite  poet 
of  his  boyhood, 

' "  Roderick "  again  with  pleasure.  A  good  deal  of  the 
scene  is  laid  in  Portugal.  Look  at  the  first  five  lines  of 
the  second  volume : 

"Count,"  said  Pelayo,  "  Nature  hath  assigned 
Two  sovereign  remedies  for  human  grief : 
Religion,  surest,  firmest,  first,  and  best. 
Strength  to  the  weak,  and  to  the  wounded  balm ; 
And  strenuous  action  next." 

How  true  they  are,  and  how  I  feel  the  absence  of  the 
second  remedy  noiv.' 

To  Sir  Robert  Morier,  who  had  been  his  host  at  Cintra, 
he  describes  himself  as 

'  gorged  with  the  mediocrity  of  Portugal,  in  churches,  castles, 
scenery,  and  wine-vintage  —  for  the  very  wine-pressers  were 
more  like  convicts  on  a  treadmill  than  the  inheritors  of  the 
most  ancient  institution  of  the  civilised  world. 

'  After  a  long  internal  struggle  I  have  determined  to  go 
home  through  Spain.  Hereafter,  perhaps,  I  shall  be  glad  to 
have  seen  Cordova  for  the  first  time,  and  Seville  and  Granada 
for  the  second  time  after  thirty  years.  I  feel  that  she,  whose 


I 


486 


LIFE  OF  DEAN-  STANLEY 


1876 


wishes  I  would  fain  consult  in  all  things,  would  not  have 
approved  of  my  leaving  any  task  half  done.' 

On  crossing  the  frontier  into  Spain  his  spirits  revived. 
The  first  Spanish  town  '  seemed  to  give  me  her  benediction. 
Badajos  is  Pax  Atigusta.'  With  the  Mosque  of  Cordova 
he  was  delighted. 

'  My  solution  of  the  Turkish  Question  is  to  remove  the 
Sultan,  after  Gladstone  has  pensioned  him  off,  to  be  out  of 
the  way  of  mischief,  or  of  doing  mischief,  hei'e,  re-establish 
him  as  Caliph  of  Cordova,  clean  out  the  cathedral,  and  re- 
store the  Mosque.' 

At  Granada  he  insisted  on  taking  Mr.  Williamson  to 
call  upon  the  Archbishop  of  Granada,  whom,  as  the  lineal 
successor  of  the  master  of  Gil  Bias,  he  was  most  anxious 
to  see.  He  was  greatly  disappointed  to  find  that  the 
Archbishop  was  absent,  and  still  more  that  the  cause  of  his 
absence  was  a  pilgrimage  to  Lourdes.  '  Had  he  gone,'  he 
said,  'to  Compostella,  that  would  have  been  right  and 
proper ;  but  that  he  should  run  after  so  brand-new  a  super- 
stition as  that  of  Lourdes  is  indeed  distressing.' 

But,  in  all  his  travels,  the  one  predominant  thought 
is  ever  present.  'Oh  to  stand  once  more  in  Henry  the 
Seventh's  Chapel ! '  is  his  exclamation  as  he  looks  at  the 
tomb  of  Isabella,  the  wife  of  Ferdinand.  On  the  speech 
of  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster,  delivered  in  October  1876,  at  Brad- 
ford, on  the  Eastern  Question,  he  remarks : 

*  How  my  dear  one  would  have  welcomed  its  well- 
weighed  language  and  its  dispassionate  tone !  What  a 
refreshing  contrast  to  the  utterances  of  Gladstone,  Bright, 
Fawcett,  and  Freeman  ! ' 

'It  will  be  a  relief  to  the  emptiness  of  this  journey,'  he 
says,  as  he  sets  his  face  towards  home,  'to  pick  up  the 
chain  of  associations  with  her  at  Madame  Mohl's.'  And 


CHAP,  xxvu       '  THE  SIX  ACTS  OF  MERCY'  487 

yet  the  visit,  when  it  came,  had  its  painful  side.  '  How 
many  remembrances,'  he  writes  to  the  Queen, 

*  were  stirred  as  I  walked  alone  up  the  staircase  in  the  Rue 
du  Bac,  which  we  had  left  in  such  agonising  anxiety  in  the 
November  of  1874.' 

His  personal  grief  opened  his  heart  with  a  tenderer 
sympathy  to  the  sorrows  of  others.  During  his  absence  in 
Portugal  one  of  the  servants  of  the  Abbey,  while  still  in 
the  vigour  of  life,  became  hopelessly  blind.  To  cheer  and 
encourage  the  sufferer  was  his  first  thought  on  his  return. 
His  sister,  Mrs.  Vaughan,  found  him  sitting  by  the  side 
of  the  blind  man,  his  own  eyes  streaming  with  tears,  en- 
deavouring, by  every  possible  thought  and  suggestion,  to 
inspire  hope  into  the  heart  of  one  on  whom  had  fallen  so 
terrible  an  afBiction.  His  efforts  were  rewarded.  Sustained 
by  his  constant  sympathy,  the  sufferer  gained  courage  to 
take  the  first,  and  hardest,  steps  towards  leading  a  useful, 
happy  life. 

In  endeavouring  to  lighten  the  trials  and  troubles  of 
others  he  felt  that  he  was  doing  his  wife's  special  work. 
This  feature  in  her  character  was  commemorated  in  the 
window  which  he  erected  to  her  memory  above  the  spot 
where  she  lay  in  Westminster  Abbey.  One  of  the  compart- 
ments depicted  three  characteristic  episodes  in  the  career 
of  her  ancestor,  King  Robert  the  Bruce,  and  three  scenes 
which  were  associated  with  the  lives  or  deaths  of  her  three 
brothers.  Lord  Elgin,  General  Bruce,  and  Sir  Frederick 
Bruce.  The  other  compartment  represented  the  '  six  acts 
of  mercy  so  suitable  to  her — tending  the  hungry,  the  thirsty, 
the  poor,  the  sick,  the  stranger,  the  oppressed.'  On  Christ- 
mas Day,  1877,  he  writes  to  the  Queen  that 

'  on  the  anniversary  of  our  wedding-day  the  window  was 
completed  over  her  grave,  and  there  is  now  nothing  further 


488 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


to  be  done  in  that  sweet  spot,  which  Your  Majesty  has 
given  to  her,  till  I  join  her.' 

Nothing  gave  him  greater  pleasure  than  any  tribute  of 
affection  or  respect  which  was  paid  to  Lady  Augusta's 
memory.  Before  her  tomb  was  finally  closed  a  little  plant 
was  found  to  be  growing  out  of  the  earth.  The  Clerk  of 
the  Works  at  Westminster,  Mr.  Wright,  who,  previous  to  his 
appointment,  was  for  many  years  employed  by  the  Queen 
at  Osborne,  uprooted  it,  and  brought  it  to  the  Dean. 
Stanley  tells  the  incident  in  a  letter  to  the  Queen,  saying 
that 

'  the  Clerk  of  the  Works,  remembering  that  he  had  seen  in 
the  gardens  at  Osborne  a  myrtle  which  had  been  brought 
from  the  grave  of  the  Duke  of  Coburg,  took  charge  of  this 
little  growth,  and  brought  it  to  me.  It  is  now  on  the  point 
of  bursting  into  a  white  flower  —  "  the  emblem  "  (as  he  said) 
"  of  beauty  and  purity  springing  from  the  grave."  I  thought 
that  Your  Majesty  would  be  touched  by  the  good  man's 
devotion,  as  I  was.  The  little  plant  is  now  in  one  of  my 
windows,  waiting  for  the  sunshine  to  bring  it  out.' 

The  incident  suggested  the  following  lines,  written  on 
the  first  anniversary  of  Lady  Augusta's  death  : 

On  the  Growth  of  a  Stonecrop  from  the  Grave. 

'  Earth  to  earth  and  dust  to  dust '  — 
Thus  our  dear  remains  we  trust ; 
Dark  and  deep  the  sacred  mould 
Shall  the  precious  charge  enfold. 
Flowers  shall  strew  the  ground  above. 
Gifts  of  reverential  love  ; 
Crowning  as  with  deathless  wreath 
Her  whose  ashes  sleep  beneath. 

What  is  this  with  life  and  breath 
Stealing  from  the  house  of  death  ? 
Bursting  into  leaf  and  flower 
All  unnursed  by  sun  or  shower? 


CHAP,  xxvn 


H/S  WIFE'S  MEMORY 


489 


Drawing  strength  the  world  to  brave 
Only  from  the  holy  grave ; 
In  its  lowly  simple  grace 
Worthy  of  its  royal  place  ? 

Hail  !  sweet  offspring  of  the  tomb, 
Shining  on  our  deepest  gloom  ! 
Emblem  of  the  better  life 
Dawning  after  this  world's  strife  — 
Teach  us  in  each  opening  leaf 
Upward  how  to  guide  our  grief; 
Bright  as  spring,  and  fresh  as  snow. 
Pure  as  she  who  rests  below. 

It  was  with  the  same  delight  at  finding  his  wife  still 
remembered  with  affection  that  he  received  the  Queen's 
request  to  plant  a  tree  to  her  memory  at  Osborne.  '  I 
went  with  Lady  Ely,'  he  writes  to  Mrs.  Drummond  in 
April  1877, 

'and  planted  the  tree.  It  was  a  kind  of  Chinese  juniper. 
I  was  glad  that  it  was  Chinese,  for  it  connects  it  with  the 
thought  of  her  interest  in  China.  I  remember  the  only 
time  that  I  saw  her  at  Oxford  before  our  marriage,  when 
the  Robert  Bruces  were  there,  she  said,  as  she  passed 
through  the  Christ  Church  quadrangle,  thinking  of  Lord 
Elgin,  "  My  thoughts  are  at  Shanghai."  It  is  a  pretty  spot 
near  the  Swiss  Cottage.  A  bird's-nest  was  in  a  bush  close 
to  it,  and  next  to  it  a  tree  planted  by  Norman  Macleod.' 

The  tree  was,  in  another  respect,  peculiarly  appropriate. 
A  few  days  later  he  writes  to  tell  the  Queen  that  he  had 
discovered  that  '  in  China  and  Japan  the  tree  is  regarded 
as  the  emblem  of  everlasting  life.' 

With  the  same  pride  in  her  memory  he  records  every 
word  that  his  friends  speak  about  her  life.  '  Old  David 
Morier,'  he  tells  Mrs.  Drummond,  'spoke  much  of  "the 
blessed  one  who  is  above."  "I  reverse,"  he  said,  "for  you 
the  words  of  the  Marriage  Service.  It  is  not  till  Death  us 
do  part,  but  till  Death  us  do  join."  '    At  the  opening  of 


490 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


some  Wesleyan  schools  at  Bethnal  Green,  which  he  at- 
tended with  the  late  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster,  he  met  Dr.  Rigg, 
who 

'  told  the  story  of  her  letter  from  Moscow  about  seeing  a 
Wesleyan  girl  there  in  one  of  the  schools.  I  am  so  glad 
when  people  take  courage  to  mention  her  name  in  my 
presence  on  these  occasions.  /  cannot  do  it,  and  therefore 
I  the  more  rejoice  that  tliey  should.' 

His  chief  thought  was  to  act  as  she  would  have  wished. 
In  November  1876  he  had  'pleasant  walks  with  two  young 
men  —  a  young  Montgomery,  and  a  young  Wildman,  both 
just  such  as  she  would  have  desired  me  to  cultivate.'  The 
service  on  Innocents'  Day,  1876,  was,  he  says,  'attended 
by  hundreds  of  children.  I  was  glad,  for  it  was  a  service 
in  which  my  Augusta  took  the  greatest  delight.'  At 
Christmas  in  the  same  year  he  had  asked  to  dinner  some 
of  his  '  poorer  neighbours.'  'It  pleases  me,  as  a  continua- 
tion of  her  good  work.'  In  January  1877  he  twice  enter- 
tained large  parties  of  workmen,  to  whom  he  delivered  two 
lectures.  '  The  last  lecture,'  he  writes,  '  is  over,  and  I  feel 
that  I  have  so  far  carried  out  her  dear  wishes.'  The  choice 
of  a  sermon  for  Easter  Sunday,  1 877,  gave  him  great  anxiety : 

'  The  difficulty  of  choice,  and  the  constant  craving  for 
the  one  judgment  which  could  have  chosen  for  me  in  a 
moment,  wore  me  to  pieces.  Yet  now  I  feel  that,  on  the 
whole,  as  if  by  a  kind  of  inspiration,  I  had  chosen,  after 
many  waverings,  as  she  would  have  wished.' 

But,  deep  and  lasting  though  Stanley's  grief  was,  it  was 
not  of  that  selfish  kind  which  isolates  itself  from  the  world 
in  inactive  melancholy.  He  did  not  shut  himself  up  from 
his  fellow-men,  but  took  them  into  the  fellowship  of  his 
loss,  and  thus  drew  out  towards  himself,  with  an  unusual 
magnetism,  that  kindly  sympathy  which  the  world  so  often 
is  at  pains  to  conceal.    He  endeavoured  to  restore  in  the 


CHAP.  XXVII  LIFE  AT  WESTMINSTER 


49 1 


happiness  of  those  around  him  the  picture  of  that  which 
he  had  himself  lost,  and  to  interweave  the  memories  of 
the  past  with  the  occupations,  the  interests,  and  even  the 
pleasures  of  the  present  and  future.  '  I  am  trying,'  he 
writes  to  M.  de  Circourt  after  his  return  from  Portugal  in 
October  1876, 

'by  incessant  occupation,  not  to  banish  grief  —  for  mine  is 
always  at  home  —  but  to  carry  on  the  work  which  my  dear 
wife  has  left  for  me  to  accomplish,  and  to  console  me  in 
her  absence.' 

His  life  at  Westminster  gradually  resumed  its  normal 
course.  Mrs.  Drummond  of  Megginch  and  her  daughter, 
whose  devoted  care  of  Lady  Augusta  during  her  illness  had 
won  his  deep  affection  and  confidence ;  and  his  widowed 
sister-in-law.  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  and  her  daughter; 
and  his  sister,  Mary  Stanley,  took  it  in  turns  to  be  with 
him  at  the  Deanery.  On  them  devolved  the  duties  which 
Lady  Augusta  had  so  lovingly  performed.  '  There  are,' 
he  used  to  say,  'two  things  I  cannot  do  :  one  is  to  under- 
stand arithmetic,  the  other  is  to  take  care  of  myself.' 

His  frugal  breakfast  was  prepared  as  Lady  Augusta  had 
prepared  it,  and  his  'Times'  taken  from  him  and  read 
aloud,  lest,  absorbed  in  its  contents,  he  should  altogether 
omit  the  meal.  Throughout  the  morning  one  of  the  ladies 
remained  in  the  house  in  case  of  need.  If  he  did  not  re- 
quire a  companion  to  walk  with  him  to  the  'Athenaeum,'  or 
to  see  some  new  discovery  which  the  Clerk  of  the  Works 
had  made  in  the  Abbey  or  the  Cloisters,  there  were  other 
duties  to  perform  —  some  reference  to  verify,  some  quota- 
tion to  find,  some  lost  sermon  or  missing  paper  to  be 
searched  for,  some  torn  manuscript  to  be  pieced  and  stitched 
together,  some  proof-sheets  to  be  corrected  for  the  printer. 
This  last  work  was  often  a  labour  of  great  difficulty,  owing 
partly  to  his  fastidious  ear,  partly  to  the  illegibility  of  his 


492  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1877 

handwriting.  He  would  go  over  each  line  again  and  again, 
touching  and  retouching,  so  as  to  avoid  roughnesses  and 
secure  a  cadenced  rhythm.  On  the  crop  of  errors  which 
the  character  of  his  handwriting  was  calculated  to  produce 
a  comment  is  supplied  by  a  story  which  he  was  himself 
fond  of  telling.  He  had  written  on  business  to  a  trades- 
man, whose  reply  was  long  delayed.  At  last  the  answer 
came.  '  Not  being  acquainted,'  wrote  the  tradesman,  '  with 
the  caligraphy  of  the  higher  orders,  I  asked  a  friend  to 
decipher  parts  of  the  note.' 

After  luncheon,  if  he  had  no  other  companion,  one  of 
the  ladies  always  accompanied  him  in  his  walk  or  his  drive, 
or  was  at  the  house  when  he  returned.  He  could  not  bear 
to  be  alone,  and  his  parting  words  when  he  left  the  house 
always  were,  '  I  shall  be  back  at  such  and  such  a  time. 
Somebody  will  be  in  the  way  '  Formal  calls  he  never 
paid ;  but  besides  his  visits  to  any  acquaintances  who  were 
in  sickness  or  distress,  there  were  certain  houses  to  which 
he  was  fond  of  going.  Among  those  relations  and  friends 
whom  he  most  often  visited  were  his  sisters-in-law.  Lady 
Lucy  Grant  and  Mrs.  Charles  Stanley ;  his  sister,  Mary 
Stanley ;  his  cousin's  widow,  the  Dowager  Lady  Stanley 
of  Alderley ;  Lord  Arthur  Russell ;  the  late  Duchess  of 
Argyll ;  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  and  Mrs.  Church ;  Profes- 
sor and  Mrs.  (now  Sir  William  and  Lady)  Flower.  Many 
of  his  happiest  afternoons  were  spent  at  the  Temple  with 
his  sister  Catherine  and  her  husband.  Dr.  Vaughan.  On 
their  sympathy  he  placed  the  fullest  reliance.  He  repeat- 
edly consulted  Dr.  Vaughan  in  his  difficulties,  though  it 
by  no  means  followed  that  he  accepted  his  advice.  To 
pass  an  hour  with  his  old  school-friend  in  his  library,  or  to 
be  cheered  and  amused  by  the  conversation  and  stories 
of  his  sister,  were  two  of  his  greatest  pleasures  in  later 
life.    At  the  Temple  there  was  no  fear  that  the  five-o'clock 


CHAP.  XXVII  LIFE  AT  WESTMINSTER 


493 


tea  would  be  omitted,  and  it  was  generally  dark  before 
Stanley  left  the  Master's  house,  and  walked  from  the 
Temple  down  the  Embankment  to  the  Deanery. 

Between  six  and  eight  in  the  evening  he  either  worked 
in  the  library  or  brought  his  work  and  papers  into  the 
drawing-room.  If  he  had  no  special  work  in  hand,  he  either 
talked  or  read  aloud,  generally  choosing  for  the  latter 
purpose  some  history  or  biography.  In  reading  aloud  he 
too  often  only  skimmed  the  page,  here  and  there  reading 
a  sentence,  while  his  eye,  glancing  down  the  lines,  gleaned 
the  meaning  for  himself  without  communicating  it  to  his 
hearers.  Anything  by  Matthew  Arnold  was  'kept  as  a 
treat  for  the  evening.'  Sometimes  extracts  from  any  book 
on  which  the  conversation  had  turned  during  the  day  would 
be  read,  not  infrequently  a  novel  of  Walter  Scott's.  Poetry 
was  occasionally  chosen,  but  never  travels.  Among  his 
favourite  books  were  Keble's  '  Christian  Year '  and  the 
*  Lyra  Innocentium.'  He  never  went  on  a  journey  without 
carrying  the  former  volume  in  his  portmanteau,  and  he 
always  read  aloud  the  poems  for  Sundays,  or  for  any  other 
special  occasion,  on  the  day  so  commemorated. 

After  1876  his  hospitality,  though  still  generous,  was 
exercised  more  rarely  and  on  a  smaller  scale ;  yet  when 
he  gave  a  dinner-party  he  took  the  utmost  pains  to  select 
and  arrange  congenial  guests.  While  the  London  season 
lasted  he  still  frequently  dined  out ;  but  he  was  wont  to 
complain  that,  since  the  death  of  Lady  Augusta,  mixed 
society  had  lost  its  principal  charm.  When  his  evenings 
were  spent  at  home,  one  or  two  men  were  often  asked  to 
dine.  Sometimes  the  evenings  proved  very  successful ; 
sometimes  they  were  much  the  reverse.  If  the  guest  was 
a  stranger,  he  might  be  thought  a  'man  of  no  intelli- 
gence,' or  he  might  'talk  too  much,'  or  he  'never  uttered.' 
If  he  were  an  old  friend,  he  might  be  '  not  good  to-night.' 


494 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


In  these  cases  Stanley  relapsed  into  silence,  involuntarily 
expressing  by  his  face  his  disappointment  and  depression. 
On  quiet  evenings,  when  only  the  family  party  was  pres- 
ent, no  literary  work  was  ever  done,  unless  a  sermon  or 
an  article  had  to  be  finished.  But  the  hours  after  dinner 
were  generally  spent  in  readings  of  Walter  Scott  or  some 
other  favourite  author. 

On  Sundays  especially,  both  before  and  after  the  3 
o'clock  and  7  o'clock  services,  his  friends  gathered  round 
him  at  the  Deanery.  The  Rev.  J.  D.  Boyle,  now  Dean  of 
Salisbury,  and  then  Vicar  of  Kidderminster,  who  was  for 
many  years  an  intimate  friend,  has  recorded  his  conversa- 
tion with  vStanley  one  Sunday  afternoon  in  June  1878, 
before  the  Special  Service  at  7  o'clock.  When  Mr.  Boyle 
entered  the  drawing-room  he  found  there  Miss  Mary 
Stanley  and  Dr.  Vaughan : 

'  Presently  Stanley  came  in,  and  pleaded  guilty  to 
having  been  asleep.  He  had  preached  twice  that  day,  and 
had  also  baptised  Sir  William  Harcourt's  son.  The  Dean 
and  Miss  Stanley  had  lately  seen  Bemerton,  and  visited 
every  place  connected  with  George  Herbert.  It  was 
singular,  he  said,  that  no  allusion  to  the  scenery,  or  even 
to  Salisbury  Cathedral,  could  be  found  in  any  of  H.'s  poems. 
I  asked  if  he  had  ever  seen  Olney,  a  place  that  had  altered 
hardly  at  all  since  Cowper's  time.  The  Dean  said  he  had 
seen  the  house  where  Cowper  died,  and  his  grave.  He 
had  been  asked  to  write  an  inscription  for  a  monument  to 
him,  and  to  select  a  passage  from  the  poems.  He  could 
think  of  nothing,  and  consulted  Hugh  Pearson,  who  sug- 
gested that  adopted  :  "  I  was  a  stricken  deer,  that  left  the 
herd,"  and  the  passage  that  follows.  I  asked  if  he  could 
remember  anyone  who  did  nothing  remarkable  before  fifty, 
like  Cowper,  in  literature  or  history.  Vaughan  spoke  of 
Cromwell  as  an  instance  of  a  man  who  had  spent  the  greater 
part  of  his  life  in  obscurity.  "  He  began,  however,"  said 
Stanley,  "to  be  famous  earlier  than  Cowper  ;  but  I  do  not 
think  he  was  more  than  sixty  at  his  death."  "There  was 
one  man,"  he  continued,  "who  might  have  altered  things 


CHAP.  XXVII 


A  TALK  WITH  STANLEY 


495 


had  he  died  at  fifty  —  Columbus,  who  was  fifty-four  when 
he  reached  the  '  New  World.'  " 

'  I  spoke  of  Shairp's  lecture  at  Oxford,  and  the  desire  he 
had  created  in  me  to  see  the  Border  Country  again.  He  and 
the  Dean  had  in  former  years  explored  the  region  round 
Moffat,  and  he  dwelt  upon  the  features  of  the  country  with 
great  delight.  I  said  Abbotsford  had  been  a  great  shock  to 
me  —  it  was  so  poor,  so  small,  so  different  from  one's  ideal. 
The  Dean  quite  agreed,  and  said  "it  was  too  sad  to  think 
of  all  that  might  have  been  had  the  sacrifice  to  Abbotsford 
not  taken  place."  We  spoke  of  the  Border  ballads,  and 
I  expressed  a  doubt  how  far  those  in  the  "  Minstrelsy " 
could  be  accounted  entirely  genuine,  when  you  remembered 
the  wonderful  swing  of  Scott's  undoubted  compositions, 
such  as  the  ballad  in  "The  Antiquary."  "He  meant  to 
be  correct,"  said  the  Dean,  "but  his  genius  must  often 
have  overmastered  him.  He  (Scott)  once  repeated  to 
Lord  Houghton  eight  lines  which  he  said  he  had  heard 
from  an  old  woman;  but  Milman  always  declared  that 
they  could  come  from  no  one  but  Walter  Scott : 

Black  were  the  pages,  and  black  were  the  maids, 

And  black  were  the  banners  that  waved  o'er  their  heads ; 

There  was  mourning,  and  weeping,  and  wailing  that  day. 

For  the  fair  flower  of  England  is  withered  away. 

Black  was  the  charger,  and  black  was  the  man. 

Black  was  the  day  when  King  Henry  rode  on. 

Prince  Edward  is  living,  and  bonny  to  see, 

But  the  Lily  of  England,  all  withered  is  she. 

'"There  is  but  one  thing,"  said  the  Dean,  "to  which 
this  can  allude.  What  is  it "  I  was  puzzled;  so  was 
Vaughan.  "The  death  of  Jane  Seymour,"  he  said. 
"  Prince  Edward  is  Edward  the  Sixth."  He  spoke  of 
the  richness  of  Scott's  genius  discovering  itself  more  and 
more  to  him  as  he  grew  older.  He  reminded  me  of  a 
friend's  saying  about  Walter  Scott  being  the  only  man 
with  a  bodily  infirmity  he  had  ever  known  free  from 
crotchets.  We  then  spoke  of  the  difference  between 
Scott  and  Byron,  and  of  Trelawney's  new  book.  "  It 
makes  Byron  no  hero,"  I  said,  "and  shows  Shelley  more 
of  a  child  than  ever."  The  Dean  said  we  had  almost 
enough  of  Shelley  literature.  I  spoke  of  the  forgery  of 
letters  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  and  how  the  forgery  was 


496 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


detected  by  F.  Palgrave  finding  a  regular  copy  from  an 
article  of  his  father's  in  Florence.  The  Dean  said  that 
"  the  Pascal  forgeries  had  been  greatly  helped  by  the  use 
of  the  paper  of  the  period,  stolen  from  the  Mint,  where 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  Master."  He  returned  to  Shelley, 
and  spoke  admiringly  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  "  Venetia." 
"Literary  biography,"  said  the  Dean,  "is,  after  all,  the 
best.  Life  is  a  greater  blessing,  surely,  for  Boswell,  Lock- 
hart,  and,  I  think  we  may  add,  George  Trevelyan." 

'  I  asked  the  Dean  if  he  knew  J.  R.  Mozley's  Essays  were 
to  be  published  immediately.  The  volume  is  to  contain  the 
essays  on  Strafford,  Laud,  and  Cromwell,  and  Blanco  White, 
and,  I  was  sorry  to  see  for  Mozley's  fame,  that  on  Arnold. 
This  led  Stanley  to  speak  of  the  one  on  Arnold.  He 
asked  me  if  it  had  been  published  before  or  after  the  Life. 
I  said  it  was  after  the  Life,  and  to  me  it  always  seemed 
a  complete  failure  as  regards  the  conception  of  Arnold's 
character.  "  Exactly  so,"  said  Stanley  ;  "  I  myself  felt  if 
Mozley  so  failed  to  grasp  Arnold,  how  could  one  trust  his 
view  of  Strafford  or  Laud  "  and,  turning  to  Vaughan,  "as 
to  Mozley's  sermons  now ;  they  have  been  praised.  Will 
they  live  Has  he  added  anything  to  theology  of  a  perma- 
nent character.''"  A  discussion  followed  as  to  M.'s  pecu- 
liar position.  The  Dean  said,  "  When  M.  was  writing  his 
Bampton  Lectures  on  Miracles,  I  exhorted  him  to  grapple 
with  the  fact  that  the  history  of  all  religions  shows  every- 
where a  great  growth  of  miraculous  narratives.  The  time 
for  the  old  Paleyan  argument  had  passed.  It  had  served 
its  purpose,  and  the  argument  from  internal  evidence  had 
been  vigorously  wielded.  What  tests  can  we  apply  to  our 
Lord's  miracles  so  as  to  place  them  in  a  category  of  their 
own?"  Vaughan  said,  "The  character  and  the  miracles 
stand  and  fall  together."  "To  me,"  said  the  Dean,  "a 
break  in  scientific  order  never  makes  a  difficulty,  possibly 
because  I  have  no  science  in  me.  A  power  that  makes 
can  unmake  or  suspend.  Looking  at  mediaeval  history, 
I  find  hosts  of  miracles  asserted  and  believed.  All  of 
these  are  gradually  discredited,  and  men  see  that  they 
were  either  innocent  illusions  or  inventions.  As  time 
proceeds,  and  the  belief  in  miracles  lessens,  what  hope  is 
there  that  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament  will  still 
continue  to  have  a  hold  on  belief }  I  am  not  speaking  of 
the  great  one,  on  which  everything  depends,  but  of  the 


CHAP.  XXVII         A  TALK  WITH  STANLEY 


497 


miracles  of  healing."  I  said  that  "the  purpose  of  the  New 
Testament  miracles  put  them  in  a  class  by  themselves." 
Vaughan  said,  "  The  manifestation  of  love  in  the  miracles 
indisposed  men  to  apply  the  usual  tests  of  historic  criti- 
cism." "To  return  to  Mozley,"  said  the  Dean  ;  "is  there 
anything  in  the  sermons  new,  anything  like  Butler's  ser- 
mon on  the  Love  of  God,  written  in  the  best  manner  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  conveying  new  ideas  "  I  spoke  of 
the  sermon  on  War,  and  Vaughan  praised  that  on  Human 
Judgments.  M.'s  book  on  the  Old  Testament  he  thought 
poor,  with  the  exception  of  the  lecture  on  Abraham. 
"What,"  said  the  Dean,  "is  his  notion  of  Abraham.?" 
"A  great  figure,"  said  Vaughan,  "thinking  nothing  of  the 
present,  but  of  the  future."  "Theology,"  said  the  Dean, 
"  if  it  is  to  live,  must  take  the  form  of  the  best  literature 
of  the  day.  The  divine  you  admire  (to  Vaughan),  Macleod 
Campbell,  is  so  rugged  and  provincial  that  he  will  not 
live."  I  pleaded  for  the  "Thoughts  on  Revelation"  as 
being  better  in  style  than  the  Atonement  book.  He  ad- 
mitted it,  and  said  that  in  his  last  fragments  there  were 
signs  of  increasing  breadth  and  beauty  of  style. 

'"Arnold,"  he  said,  "took  much  of  the  form  of  the 
literature  of  his  time,  and  his  best  things  survive.  Besides, 
in  his  sermons  on  Prophecy  he  showed  an  advance  and 
gave  new  ideas.  When  writing  lately  on  the  Eucharist, 
and  wishing  to  express  what  I  believe  to  be  the  meaning 
of  the  words  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  St.  John,  I  could  find 
nothing  better  or  more  fit  for  the  purpose  than  Arnold's 
words  in  the  first  volume  of  his  sermons."  I  said  that  in 
reading  the  essay  I  had  been  particularly  struck  with  the 
simple  purity  of  the  language. 

'  Newman  was  then  spoken  of,  and  the  results  of  his 
writing.  The  Dean  recalled  his  extraordinary  theory  about 
immortality  in  his  early  sermons.  "He  made  it,"  he  said, 
"  the  consequence  of  frequent  participation  of  the  Holy 
Communion."  "Even  Faber,"  he  added,  "in  his  Anglican 
days,  used  to  make  game  of  the  notion,  and  said  it  degraded 
celebrations  to  be  so  many  bread-fruit-trees."  Vaughan  said 
he  was  always  struck  with  a  gross  materialism  underlying 
much  of  Newman's  teaching,  and  painfully  predominant  in 
some  Ritualist  writers,  even  though  men  of  true  spiritual 
life.    I  spoke  of  the  terrible  passage  in  "  Loss  and  Gain  " 


VOL.  II 


K  K 


498 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


about  the  Mass  :  "  Quickly  they  go,  '  as  when  it  was  said  in 
the  beginning,  What  thou  doest,  do  quickly.'  "  The  Dean 
said  he  had  "always  felt  a  horror  at  that  passage."  "  How 
different,"  I  said,  "from  Arnold  and  the  last  conversation 
with  Lake."  The  Dean  repeated  to  himself  the  passage 
in  the  Life  ending  with  "  My  dear  L.,  the  words  that  I 
speak  unto  you,  'they  are  spirit,  and  they  are  life.'"  It 
was  now  seven,  and  we  went  into  the  Abbey.' 

In  incessant  occupation  Stanley  seemed  to  find  a  refuge 
from  the  sad  thoughts  of  leisure  moments.  With  the  cour- 
age and  self-forgetfulness  which  in  such  matters  were  fea- 
tures in  his  character,  he  never  relaxed  his  energies.^  No 
trouble,  no  labour,  seemed  too  great  to  be  bestowed  on 
what  he  thought  to  be  his  duty.  With  even  more  than  his 
old  readiness  he  responded  to  solicitations  to  preach  or 
lecture,  regardless  of  distance  or  his  own  convenience.  If 
obliged  to  refuse  the  invitation,  he  gave  his  reasons  for 
declining  with  the  same  simplicity  and  modesty  as  his 
consent.  His  literary  activity  was  rather  increased  than 
diminished.  Always  an  untiring  worker,  he  threw  his 
whole  strength  into  everything  which  he  undertook.  His 
perseverance  was  as  stubborn  as  his  facility  was  remark- 
able. Some  of  his  friends  strongly  urged  him  to  devote 
himself  to  the  completion  of  his  '  History  of  the  Jewish 
Church.'  They  felt,  and  not  without  justice,  that  his  learn- 
ing and  literary  powers  were  frittered  away  in  the  mass 
of  disjointed,  miscellaneous  writing  which  still  flowed  from 

*  The  following  incident  is  worth  recording,  as  an  indication  of  his  courage 
and  of  his  keen  sense  of  humour,  which  on  occasion  could  take  an  unexpectedly 
practical  turn.  One  day  a  visitor  was  shown  into  the  library,  who  turned  out 
to  be  a  madman.  He  said,  in  a  threatening  tone,  as  he  advanced  into  the 
room,  '  Mr.  Dean,  I  have  a  message  to  you  from  God.  You  are  to  take  me 
to  the  Queen,  whom  I  am  to  address  on  a  most  solemn  matter.'  '  In  that 
case,'  said  Stanley,  '  there  is  not  a  moment  to  lose.'  Opening  the  door,  he 
ushered  his  visitor  down  the  stairs  and  through  the  hall,  picking  up  his  own 
hat  on  the  way.  When  they  reached  the  front  door,  Stanley  opened  it,  passed 
his  visitor  through,  and  closed  it  behind  him. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


LITERARY  WORK 


499 


his  pen.  But  such  a  continuous  effort  as  was  required  to 
write  the  '  Life  of  Christ '  demanded  more  strength  than 
he  was  able  to  command.  It  also  would  have  necessitated 
a  partial  and  prolonged  retirement  from  his  numerous 
engagements,  which  was  practically  impossible.  Inces- 
santly interrupted  by  unexpected  calls  upon  his  time, 
obliged  by  his  personal  and  official  position,  not  only  to 
conduct  a  voluminous  correspondence,  but  to  compose  and 
deliver  numerous  sermons,  lectures,  and  addresses,  he  yet 
continued  to  accomplish  an  amount  of  literary  work  which 
was  remarkable  both  in  quantity  and  variety. 

For  a  great  part  of  the  concluding  period  of  his  life  the 
Committee  for  the  Revision  of  the  New  Testament,  of 
which  he  was  a  member,  was  still  sitting.  In  its  proceed- 
ings he  took  the  warmest  interest,  and  regularly  attended 
its  meetings  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  where  he  pleaded 
for  the  retention  of  every  innocent  archaism.  The  work 
was  finished  on  Stanley's  birthday,  December  13th,  1878. 
The  coincidence  suggested  the  following  lines,  which  he 
sent  to  the  Dean  of  Lichfield  in  acknowledgment  of  two 
sonnets  written  by  his  brother-Dean  at  the  commencement 
and  the  conclusion  of  the  revision  : 

When  dark  December's  days  had  reached  thirteen 
Heaven's  light  first  dawned  upon  a  future  Dean. 
What  Seer  could  in  that  far-off  year  have  guessed 
How  his  gray  age  would  in  that  day  be  blessed ; 
A  gift  to  grace  with  more  than  gold  or  gem 
The  chamber  of  his  own  Jerusalem, 
By  the  skilled  hands  of  kindest  friendship  wrought, 
Through  nine  long  years  of  friendship  and  of  thought ;  — 
On  its  bright  face  forgotten  splendours  shine ; 
Though  old,  yet  new ;  though  human,  yet  Divine  ! 

In  the  debates  of  Convocation  he  ceased  to  take  his  former 
active  part ;  but  scarcely  a  session  passed  in  which  he  did 


K  K  2 


500 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1877-81 


not  speak.  His  letters  to  the  'Times  '  on  topics  of  contem- 
porary importance,  and  his  obituary  notices  of  distinguished 
men  of  the  day,  attest  alike  his  varied  interests  and  the  wide 
circle  of  his  friends  among  the  leaders  of  thought  or  action. 
The  two  volumes  of  his  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  Scotland  * 
and  America^  scarcely  represent  a  twentieth  part  of  his 
activity  as  a  preacher,  lecturer,  and  speaker.  His  sermons 
on  Thomas  Carlyle  ^  and  Lord  John  Thynne were  preached 
in  February  1881,  (the  year  in  which  the  preacher  died),  and 
that  on  Lord  Beaconsfield  ^  so  late  as  the  ist  of  May,  two 
months  before  his  own  death.  Out  of  his  many  contribu- 
tions to  periodical  literature  special  mention  may  be  made 
of  his  two  articles  in  the  '  Edinburgh  Review,'  ^  the  first  on 
Professor  Geffcken's  '  Church  and  State,'  the  second  on  the 
Religious  Movement  of  the  Nineteenth  Century ;  his  articles 
in  'Eraser's  Magazine '  on  Inverawe  and  Ticonderoga,  and 
on  the  Variations  of  the  Roman  Church  ;  his  article  in  the 
'Nineteenth  Century '^^  on  the  Creed  of  the  Early  Chris- 
tians; his  articles  in  '  Macmillan's  Magazine '  on  the 
English  Law  of  Burial,  the  Historical  Aspect  of  the  United 
States,  the  Historical  Aspect  of  the  American  Churches, 
Subscription,  and  the  Westminster  Confession,  the  proof 
of  the  latter  being  corrected  for  the  press  on  what  proved  to 
be  his  deathbed.  Besides  these  articles  he  wrote  prefaces, 
more  or  less  lengthy,  to  such  books  as  Greg's  '  Layman's 

*  Addresses  and  Sermons  delivered  at  St.  Andrews.    London,  1 87 7. 

*  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America.    New  York,  1879. 

"  '  Thomas  Carlyle.'  February  6th,  1881.  Published  in  Sermons  on  Special 
Occasions.    London,  1882. 

'  'The  Days  of  Old.'    February  13th,  1881.  Ibid. 
^  'The  Earl  of  Beaconsfield.'    May  ist,  1881.  Ibid. 

*  The  Edinburgh  Revieiv  for  July  1877  and  April  1 88 1. 
1''  Fraser's  Magazine  for  October  1878  and  May  1880. 

11  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  August  1880. 

12  Macmillan's  Magazine  for  March  1878,  January  1879,  June  1879, 
January  1881,  and  August  1881. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


INTEREST  IN  POLITICS 


501 


Legacy,'  the  '  New  Biblia  Pauperum,'  1*  Lord  Stratford  de 
Redcliffe's  '  Eastern  Question,'  and  the  volume  of  Sermons 
on  '  Church  and  Chapel '  ^'^  edited  by  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Hadden. 
More  lengthy  products  of  his  literary  activity  were  the  two 
larger  volumes  which,  in  their  proper  place,  will  require 
more  detailed  notice  —  his  'Memoirs  of  Edward  and 
Catherine  Stanley,'     and  his  '  Christian  Institutions.' 

Nor  was  he  so  absorbed  in  literary  work  that  he  ceased 
to  watch  with  careful  attention  the  course  of  home  and 
foreign  politics. 

In  the  Queen's  assumption  of  the  Imperial  title  he  was 
deeply  interested,  thinking,  with  Lord  Beaconsfield,  that  it 
would  strongly  impress  the  Indian  people.  '  I  wrote  a  let- 
ter on  the  subject,'  he  tells  the  Queen  in  April  1876,  'to 
the  "Spectator"  — not  on  the  merits  of  the  question,  but 
on  the  agitation  against  it.  A  plain  statement  might,  I 
thought,  do  good.  But  the  letter  was  not  inserted,  partly 
because  it  was  too  long,  partly  because  it  did  not  agree 
with  the  opinions  of  the  paper.'  A  month  later  he  wrote 
on  the  same  subject  to  Professor  Max  Muller  : 

'  I  do  not  feel  that  we  have  got  to  the  bottom  —  if  there 
be  any  bottom  —  of  the  animosity  against  the  Indian  Title. 
The  conduct  of  the  Opposition  I  understand,  though  I  do 
not  admire  it,  being  obviously  occasioned  by  the  inadvert- 
ence of  the  Ministers  in  not  consulting  them  beforehand. 
But  what  I  neither  understand  nor  admire  is  the  conduct 

'3  A  LavmatCs  Legacy.  By  Samuel  Greg,  with  a  prefatory  letter  by 
A.  P.  Stanley.    London,  1877.    8vo.  * 

The  New  Biblia  Pauperum,  with  prefatory  notice  by  A.  V.  Stanley. 
London,  1877.  4'°- 

1*  The  Eastern  Question.  By  S.  Canning,  Viscount  Stratford  de  Redcliffe, 
with  preface  by  A.  P.  Stanley.    London,  1881.  8vo. 

i«  Church  and  Chapel.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Hadden,  with  intro- 
duction by  A.  P.  Stanley,  pp.  xv.-xlviii.    London,  1881.  8vo. 

Memoirs  of  E(huard  and  Catherine  Stanley.    London,  1 879.  8vo. 

^8  Christian  Institutions  ;  Essays  on  Ecclesiastical  Subjects.  London,  1881. 
8vo. 


502 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


of  the  great  newspapers,  which,  having  first  received  the 
title  with  enthusiasm,  tlien,  without  any  change  of  circum- 
stance, furiously  attacked  it,  and  repeated  all  the  gossip, 
which  a  moment's  inquiry  might  have  told  them  was  untrue. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  the  country  at  large  took  any  great 
concern  in  it,  or  we  should  have  heard  of  meetings  and  the 
like.  On  the  whole,  I  place  it  among  the  most  curious  of 
the  panics,  theological,  ecclesiastical,  and  political,  of  which 
I  have  seen  so  many  during  the  last  30  years.' 

During  the  closing  months  of  the  same  year,  and  through- 
out the  two  following  years,  the  Eastern  Question  occupied 
a  large  space  in  his  letters.  With  all  his  Russian  proclivi- 
ties, he  could  not  share  in  the  growing  feeling  which  at 
first  prevailed  in  England  in  favour  of  the  policy  of  Russia 
towards  the  Ottoman  Empire.  The  gallant  struggle  made 
by  the  Turks  for  their  national  existence  in  Europe  power- 
fully appealed  to  the  chivalry  of  his  nature  and  to  his 
unfailing  sympathies  with  the  weaker  side.  He  felt  that 
the  excitement  caused  in  England  by  the  Bulgarian  atroci- 
ties, though  it  originated 

*  in  a  burst  of  genuine  indignation  against  Turkish  mis- 
government,  was  coloured  and  perverted  as  it  rolled  on, 
partly  by  personal  and  political  animosity  towards  the 
Ministry  at  home,  partly  by  various  small  ecclesiastical 
influences.' 

The  agitation  was,  in  fact,  assuming  that  unreasoning  char- 
acter which  he  so  deeply  deplored  in  the  panics  of  ecclesi- 
astical controversies.    He  resisted  with  all  his  strength  the 

*  insane  delusion '  of  exalting  popular  opinion  and  popular 
movements  above  the  judgment  of  the  wise.  He  depre- 
cated the  decision  of  complicated  political  issues  by  the 
necessarily  ignorant  clamour  of  excited  mobs.  '  The  state 
of  the  political  world  here,'  he  writes  to  M.  de  Circourt 
early  in  1877, 

'  is  very  curious.  There  are  very  few  who  love  the  Russians 
with  the  deep  gratitude  and  affection  which  I  entertain  for 


CHAP.  XXVII 


DEATH  OF  PIO  NO  NO 


503 


them.  Yet  there  is  sprung  up,  from  various  quarters,  a 
poHtical  sympathy  with  them  which  I  can  hardly  share. 
At  any  rate,  although  the  Turkish  Empire  may  be  doomed, 
I  cannot  regard  without  respect  the  last  effort  of  the  Otto- 
man race  to  defend  their  homes  and  their  faith.  Gladstone 
is  filled  with  a  genuine  enthusiasm  for  the  Eastern  Chris- 
tians ;  but,  combined  with  this,  he  has  a  hold  on  the  masses, 
and  the  masses  have  a  hold  on  him,  that  makes  his  future 
career,  now  that  he  is  disengaged  from  the  control  of  his 
party,  a  phenomenon  at  once  most  interesting  and  most 
portentous.' 

The  death  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  in  February  1878,  following 
the  death  of  Victor  Emanuel  in  the  preceding  January,  was 
a  dramatic  coincidence  which  excited  his  keenest  interest. 
When  the  King  lay  on  his  deathbed,  the  Pope  forgot  his 
ancient  enmity,  and  sent  to  say  that,  but  for  his  great  in- 
firmity, he  would  himself  have  come  to  see  the  dying  man. 
This  incident,  which  revived  in  the  heart  of  the  Roman 
populace  the  lost  popularity  of  Pio  Nono,  vividly  impressed 
Stanley's  imagination.  From  some  verses  written  for  the 
Queen  on  the  occasion  the  following  lines  are  taken  : 

O'er  Tiber's  stream,  with  sweep  sublime, 

A  shadow  moved  by  tower  and  hall ; 
It  smote  the  Monarch  in  his  prime. 

The  Pontiff  in  his  lingering  fall. 
In  each  the  nation  joy'd  to  see 

.'^t  that  dread  hour  the  better  part  — 
The  patriot,  faithful,  frank,  and  free. 

The  prelate's  generous  human  heart. 
Long,  long  estranged  —  united  then  — 

In  their  loved  country's  mingled  woe, 
Unlikest  they  of  mortal  men. 

Yet  not  without  a  kindred  glow. 

With  all  his  old  eagerness  he  gathered  from  friends  in 
Rome  the  fullest  details  respecting  the  death  of  Pio  Nono 
and  the  prospects  of  change  in  the  policy  of  the  Vatican. 


504 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1877 


A  few  years  earlier  he  would  have  hurried  to  Rome  to 
hear  the  announcement  in  the  Piazza  of  St.  Peter's,  '  Habe- 
mus  Pontificem,'  and  the  proclamation,  by  the  great  bell,  of 
Leo  XIII.  Now,  however,  he  feels  that  he  has  changed. 
'  In  former  days,'  he  tells  the  Queen, 

'  I  should  much  have  enjoyed  being  there,  and  I  almost 
think  ive  should  have  attempted  it.  But  now  I  have  not  the 
spirit  for  it.  And  Rome  especially  is  a  place  where  I  should 
most  painfully  feel  the  absence  of  the  companionship  which 
made  everything  doubly  charming.' 

But  it  naturally  was  in  home  politics  and  in  ecclesiastical 
affairs  that  his  interests  were  most  strongly  enlisted.  The 
attempt  to  divorce  religion  from  secular  life  and  to  separate 
Church  from  State  he  regarded  as  a  baleful  enterprise.  He 
watched  its  growth,  as  evidenced  in  the  resistance  to  civil 
control  which  marked  the  policy  of  the  High  Church  party, 
in  the  work  of  the  Liberation  Society,  and  in  the  rational- 
istic repudiation  of  a  State  religion,  with  mingled  fear  and 
sadness.  He  saw  the  tendency  fed  by  the  jealou.sy  of  Non- 
conformists, and  for  this  reason,  as  well  as  from  his  desire 
to  promote  general  goodwill  among  religious  bodies,  he 
promoted  every  measure  which  could  mitigate  their  sense 
of  injustice.  Such  a  measure  he  found  in  the  Burials  Bill 
of  1877.^^  He  attended  the  debates  on  the  Bill  with  the 
keenest  interest.  He  signed  a  memorial,  in  March  1876, 
urging  the  advantage  to  the  Church  of  settling  the  con- 
troversy by  '  some  reasonable  concession  to  the  feelings  of 

13  The  Burials  Question  had  been  for  many  years  before  Parliament.  From 
1861  to  1868  a  Bill  upon  the  subject  had  been  introduced  session  after  session 
by  Sir  M.  Peto.  From  1868  onwards  the  question  was  year  after  year  brought 
before  the  House  by  Mr.  (now  Sir  George)  Osborne  Morgan.  In  1877 
the  Conservative  Government  were  pledged  to  introduce  a  Bill,  and  the 
pledge  was  fulfilled  by  the  Duke  of  Richmond's  Burial  Acts  Consolidation 
Bill.  The  Bill  was  eventually  dropped,  in  spite  of  the  support  which  it  re- 
ceived from  Archbishop  Tait.  It  was  not  till  1880  that  Mr.  Osborne  Morgan 
succeeded  in  carrying  his  Bill. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


THE  BURIALS  BILL 


Nonconformists.'  He  spoke  on  the  subject  in  Convoca- 
tion, and  he  read  a  paper  upon  the  question  before  a 
meeting  of  clergy  and  laymen  in  London  on  February  7th, 
1878.  His  view  was  that  'the  English  law  of  burial  per- 
mitted the  performance  of  other  than  the  rights  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  the  churchyards  and  cemeteries  of 
the  National  Church.'  Even  if  this  were  not  so,  he  ap- 
pealed from  the  eager  partisans  on  either  side,  to  the 
'reasonable  Nonconformists'  and  the  'charitable  Church- 
men,' to  cease  from  a  struggle  in  which  every  victory  was 
'a  loss  to  charity  and  to  truth.' 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  measure,  when  three  years 
later  it  passed  into  law,  was  accepted  by  the  clergy  of  the 
Established  Church,  who  had  most  vehemently  opposed 
its  principle  so  long  as  opposition  was  possible.  It  was  a 
question  on  which  men  felt  strongly  on  either  side,  and  it 
was  one  on  which  Stanley  opposed,  not  for  the  first  time, 
the  almost  unanimous  feeling  of  his  clerical  brethren.  He 
formed  his  own  judgment  independently,  and  he  maintained 
his  opinion  with  outspoken  frankness.  But  the  antagonism 
in  which  on  this,  as  on  other  occasions,  he  was  placed 
towards  the  convictions  of  the  clergy  never  embittered  his 
feelings  towards  his  profession,  and  he  never  forgot  the 
provocation  which  he  so  often  gave  by  his  attitude.  In 
the  beginning  of  1880  he  was  present  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel.  An  attempt 
was  made  to  shout  him  down,  on  account  of  the  tribute 
which  he  paid  to  Bishop  Colenso  for  his  services  to  the 
natives  of  his  diocese.  A  friend  commented  severely  on 
the  unmannerly  treatment  which  the  Dean  had  received. 
'  I  feel  very  deeply  your  kind  expressions,'  replied  Stanley. 

'  You  must  not  suppose  that  I  have  any  ground  of  complaint 
against  the  clergy  in  general.    On  the  contrary,  I  know 

2"  'The  English  Law  of  Burial.'  Published  in  I\racmiUan''s  Magazine  for 
March  1878. 


5o6 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


well  that  these  noisy  demonstrations  proceed  only  from  a 
few,  in  whom  party  spirit  has  quenched  all  common-sense 
and  common  honesty.  From  the  mass  of  my  brethren, 
considering  the  provocation  I  give,  I  have  met  with  a 
generosity  and  sympathy  for  which  I  must  always  be 
grateful.  But  it  is  truly  encouraging  to  find  that  anything 
which  I  have  said  is  of  use  to  those  who,  like  you,  will 
have  to  carry  on  the  good  fight  "when  we  are  dead  and 
gone."  ' 

While  he  was  thus  eager,  not  only  to  maintain  kindly 
relations  with  Nonconformists,  but  to  remove  all  reasonable 
grounds  of  jealousy,  he  was  a  vehement  defender  of  the 
Established  Church.  He  championed  its  cause  the  more 
strongly  because  in  the  attitude  of  political  leaders  towards 
it  he  saw  the  same  disastrous  inclination  to  be  led  instead 
of  leading,  and  to  accept  popular  opinion  as  an  oracle. 
'What  revolts  me,'  he  writes  to  Professor  Shairp  in  1878, 

'  more  than  the  destruction  of  the  Scottish  or  English 
Church  is  the  shameless  want  of  principle,  according  to 
which  public  men  avowedly  declare  that  they  will  do  that 
f^r  which  they  have  no  disposition  or  conviction  in  order 
to  bring  their  party  into  power.  This  is  neither  patriotism 
nor  statesmanship.    It  is  corruption  ;  it  is  death.' 

As  in  former  days,  the  routine  of  daily  life  and  the 
pressure  of  work  were  relieved  by  frequent  absences  from 
London.  Sometimes  his  main  object  in  leaving  home  was 
rest  or  relaxation,  sometimes  the  delivery  of  an  address 
or  a  sermon,  more  rarely,  convalescence  after  illness.  But, 
whatever  the  object,  it  was  always  combined  with  visits  to 
scenes  of  interest,  and  there  were  few  places  which  did  not 
yield  him  some  fresh  harvest  of  associations  or  knowledge. 

At  Keswick,  where  he  lectured  on  Robert  Southey,^^  he 
traced  every  spot  in  the  district  which  was  connected  with 

2' '  Robert  Southey:  A  Lecture  delivered  at  Keswick,  March  31st,  1879' 
(^The  Transactions  of  the  Cumberland  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Literature  and  Science,  Part  iv.). 


CHAP.  XXVII      LECTURES  IN  THE  COUNTRY 


507 


the  life  of  a  poet  in  whose  verse  he  never  ceased  to 
delight.  At  Bristol  ^  he  used  the  opportunity  afforded  him 
of  addressing  the  students  of  University  College  to  master 
the  history  of  the  Bristol  Riots.  At  Darlington,  where  he 
was  the  guest  of  a  Quaker  family,  he  was  keenly  on  the 
watch  for  any  religious  peculiarities  which  might  illustrate 
his  favourite  study  of  comparative  theology.  '  He  arrived,' 
writes  Mr.  Hodgkin,  who  was  one  of  the  guests  invited  to 
meet  him, 

'  on  a  cold  March  day  in  1877,  and  it  was  some  time  before 
he  recovered  from  the  journey.  But  gradually  he  came 
out  of  his  shell.  First  one  quiet  little  remark,  then  an- 
other ;  then  an  anecdote  or  a  passage  of  delicate  drollery 
—  and  presently  we  were  all  listening  and  all  charmed.' 

The  address  which  he  came  to  deliver  was  given  in  the 
Town  Hall,  in  connection  with  the  college  established  by 
the  British  School  Society.  Its  subject  was  the  points  in 
the  Christian  creed  which  are  held  in  common  by  all 
Christians.    'It  was,'  says  Mr.  Hodgkin, 

'  full  of  his  all-embracing  charity,  and  seemed  to  lift  the 
whole  audience  into  some  higher  sphere  while  he  spoke. 
The  soul  was  soothed  and  cheered  by  listening  to  him  ; 
but,  perhaps,  the  intellect  was  not  altogether  satisfied.' 

The  acquaintance  which  Stanley  made  on  this  occasion 
with  Mr.  Hodgkin  ripened  into  friendship.  At  one  of  their 
meetings  the  conversation  turned  upon  Buddhism. 

'  "What  a  strange  alteration,"  said  Stanley,  "there  has 
been  in  the  lifetime  of  one  generation !  I  remember 
when  the  name  of  Gautama  was  scarcely  known,  except 
to  a  few  scholars,  and  not  always  well  spoken  of.  And 
now  he  stands  —  second."  There  was  something  very 
impressive  to  me  in  the  way  in  which  he  said  this  (as  I 

2^  '  The  Education  of  After-life ' :  An  Address  delivered  at  University  Col- 
lege, Bristol,  October  27th,  1877. 


5o8 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


seem  to  remember  him),  with  hands  and  eyes  uplifted,  and 
leaving  the  name  of  the  first  unspoken.' 

'  I  scarcely  knew,'  concludes  Mr.  Hodgkin, 

'  how  precious  was  the  little  fragment  of  Stanley's  friend- 
ship which  I  had  till  I  found  that  I  should  meet  him  no 
more.' 

His  numerous  preaching  engagements  carried  him  into 
every  part  of  the  country.  Preaching  for  Dr.  Cameron  Lees 
at  Paisley,  or  for  Dr.  Story  at  Roseneath,  he  neglected 
no  opportunity  of  adding  to  his  fund  of  information.  At 
Paisley  he  explored  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  Abbey ; 
at  Roseneath  he  was  keenly  interested  in  the  Irvingite 
movement,  which  had  originated  in  the  parish,  and  in  the 
Manse,  which  was  supposed  to  have  become  the  home  of 
Jeanie  Deans.  Even  when  he  was  recovering,  at  Torquay, 
from  a  serious  illness  in  March  1878,  he  was  still  possessed 
by  the  same  '  grand  curiosity,'  eager  to  extract  information 
from  the  conversation  of  two  antiquaries  vi/^hom  he  likens 
to  Jonathan  Oldbuck  and  Sir  Arthur  Wardour ;  listening 
with  the  keenest  interest  to  a  description  of  Napoleon  I., 
whom  Mr.  Froude,  the  brother  of  the  historian,  had  seen 
in  Torbay ;  or,  fresh  from  the  re-reading  of  Macaulay's 
account,  identifying  the  actual  spot  at  Brixham  where 
William  of  Orange  had  landed.  '  I  laid  my  hand  on  the 
stone,  and  now  believe  in  1688  ! ' 

Other  expeditions  were  made,  rather  for  the  change  and 
rest  which  they  afforded  than  for  business  or  for  conva- 
lescence. Such  were  the  visits  which  he  paid,  with  Mrs. 
and  Miss  Drummond,  to  his  cousin  at  Penrhos,  to  Alderley, 
and  to  Oxford  ;  or  his  August  round  of  visits  to  country- 
houses  in  Scotland  ;  or  the  more  lengthy  trip  to  the  Con- 
tinent which  he  made  with  Mr.  Victor  Williamson  in 
September  1877.    The  last-named  tour  began  with  the 


CHAP.  XXVII  DEATHS  OF  FRIENDS  S09 


Righi,  and  ended  with  Baden  and  Domremi  and  Paris. 
'  After  leaving  Baden,'  he  tells  the  Queen, 

'  I  saw  a  place  which  my  dear  one  and  I  had  always  wished 
to  see,  and  had  not  seen  — Domremi,  the  birthplace  of  Joan 
of  Arc.  I  read  again  the  whole  story  of  the  Maid,  and 
thought  it  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  extraordinary 
mixtures  of  superstition,  heroism,  and  good-sense  on  her 
part,  and  ingratitude,  stupidity,  and  cruelty  on  the  part  of 
the  French  and  English.' 

But  neither  the  loving  care  of  relations  and  friends,  nor 
his  many  interests  and  occupations,  nor  his  expeditions  at 
home  and  abroad,  could  entirely  lift  the  cloud  of  depression 
which  hung  about  him.  His  physical  strength  was  under- 
mined by  incessant  activity,  combined  with  the  prolonged 
strain  upon  mind  and  body  of  his  wife's  illness  which  cul- 
minated in  the  shock  of  her  death.  His  recuperativ^e  powers 
showed  signs  of  failure.  In  the  summer  of  1877  he  had 
been  unwell,  and  in  the  early  winter  of  1878  he  had  been 
for  several  weeks  prostrated  by  a  serious  illness. 

During  the  last  two  years  death  had  been  busy  among 
his  friends.  In  1877  Mr.  Motley,  the  historian  of  the 
Dutch  Republic,  died,  and  was  buried  in  Kensal  Green 
Cemetery,  where  Stanley  read  the  funeral  service.  '  In 
his  conversation,'  he  says,  '  I  always  took  the  greatest  in- 
terest and  delight,  and  he  was  bound  to  me  by  the  strong- 
est sympathy  from  our  joint  sorrow  of  the  last  two  years.' 
A  few  days  later  he  suffered  a  far  severer  loss  in  the  death 
of  his  cousin,  Louisa  Stanley,  his  faithful  correspondent, 
'  the  most  affectionate  of  friends  and  charming  of  compan- 
ions.' In  the  spring  of  1878  Sir  Gilbert  Scott,  the  architect 
of  the  Abbey,  died;  'and  now  a  stranger  will  come,  who 
did  not  know  her.'  In  the  summer  of  the  same  year  died 
the  Duchess  of  Argyll,  'always  a  very  faithful,  good,  and 
kind  friend  to  me.    Both  Augusta  and  I  always  admired  the 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


high,  grand,  almost  stern  elevation  of  her  character  above 
all  the  petty,  paltry  things,  both  of  society  and  of  politics.' 
Her  death  was  almost  immediately  followed  by  that  of  the 
only  son  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  by  that  of 
Mr.  Russell  Gurney,  '  an  admirable  man,  and  devotedly  at- 
tached to  my  Augusta.'  The  death  of  Earl  Russell,  though 
it  brought,  as  he  says,  '  no  sadness  with  the  close  of  a  long 
and  most  distinguished  career,'  yet  severed  another  cher- 
ished link  with  the  past.    'He  was,'  says  Stanley, 

'  my  first  patron,  and  I  had  seen  him  shortly  before  his 
death.  He  was  much  aged,  but  the  flow  of  humour,  anec- 
dote, and  reminiscence  was  still  there.  As  soon  as  he  saw 
me  he  repeated  an  old  joke  of  his.  "  You  know  that  I  call 
you  Diy  Pope,  but  I  always  remind  you  that  you  are  tiot 
infallible."  He  talked  a  good  deal  about  Mr.  Fox,  in  con- 
nection with  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade,  of  vv^hich  he 
said  Mr.  Fox  was  the  chief  promoter.  I  asked  him  what 
was  the  prevailing  motive.  He  paused  for  an  instant,  and 
then  said,  "  It  was  that  Fox  had  a  genuine  love  for  the 
Jiuman  race." '  ' 

The  successive  shocks  told  upon  his  weakened  frame.  A 
complete  change  of  scene  seemed  the  only  remedy.  Various 
plans  were  discussed.  Jamaica  and  Cyprus  were  in  turn 
proposed  and  rejected.  Finally,  with  infinite  misgivings, 
increased  by  the  alarming  illness  of  his  friend,  Hugh 
Pearson,  he  decided  to  visit  America. 

Years  before,  the  expedition  to  America  had  been 
planned  by  his  wife  and  himself.  His  brother-in-law. 
Sir  Frederick  Bruce,  was  then  the  British  Minister  at 
Washington,  and  a  visit  to  him  at  the  Legation  supplied 
an  additional  object  for  the  voyage.  After  his  sudden 
death,  in  1867,  the  plan  had  been  laid  aside.  It  was  now 
renewed  under  widely  different  circumstances.  '  My  dear 
Augusta,'  writes  Stanley  to  the  Queen  on  August  31st, 
1878, 


CHAP.  XXVII 


VISIT  TO  AMERICA 


'  had  often  wished  that  we  should  accompUsh  the  voyage 
to  America,  and  I  feel  that  the  change  of  scene  would  be 
better  for  me  than  anything  else.  It  is  a  long  journey ; 
but  I  enjoy  the  sea,  and  I  have  often  felt  that  I  could  never 
quite  understand  Europe  till  I  had  seen  America.  My  old 
and  tried  friend,  Mr.  George  Grove,  goes  with  me,  and  also 
a  young  medical  man,  Mr.  Gerald  Harper,  a  friend  of  my 
sister,  Mrs.  Vaughan,  who  is  much  in  favour  of  my  going. 

The  party,  consisting  of  Stanley,  Mr.  (now  Sir)  George 
Grove,  and  Dr.  Gerald  Harper,  started  from  Liverpool  in 
the  Siberia  0Y\  September  6th,  1878.  Every  moment  of  the 
voyage  was  used  in  preparation  for  the  coming  campaign. 
All  the  books  bearing,  on  America,  including  not  only 
histories,  but  the  novels  of  Hawthorne  and  Fenimore 
Cooper,  were  eagerly  devoured.  Everyone  who  could  give 
him  any  insight  into  American  life  was  questioned  ;  and, 
among  the  fellow-passengers  who  were  thus  examined  on 
the  tastes  and  habits  of  their  countrymen,  he  was  fortunate 
to  find  in  the  Bishop  of  Western  New  York  (Cleveland 
Coxe)  an  '  agreeable  companion '  as  well  as  '  a  mine  of  in- 
formation.' 'I  can  now,'  he  writes  on  board  the  Siberia, 
'repeat  the  names  of  all  the  Presidents,  and  explain  the 
meaning  of  Republican  and  Democrat.'  As  his  knowledge 
of  America  grew  his  hope  of  enjoyment  increased.  Before 
he  sighted  Cape  Cod  —  the  first  point  of  land  which  had 
gladdened  the  eyes  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  —  he  was  scarcely 
less  eager  in  his  anticipations  than  he  had  been  at  the 
prospect  of  visiting  the  most  ancient  historical  site  in 
Europe. 

Nor  was  he  disappointed.  Early  in  the  voyage  he  had 
felt  '  how  all  the  voyage,  the  passengers,  the  landing,  would 
have  been  transfigured  if  she  had  been  here.  Now  it  is 
my  only  wish  to  see,  to  have  seen,  and  to  return.'  But 
from  the  moment  that  he  landed  at  Boston,  and  '  saw  the 
sun  setting  behind  its  harbour,  as  it  does  in  the  window  at 


512 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


187S 


Westminster  Abbey,'  ^  his  enthusiasm  never  flagged. 
'  Everything  is  lost  in  the  interest  and  the  sense  of  con- 
tinued kindness  ;  the  amusement  also  is  incessant.' 

He  did  not  close  his  eyes  to  the  defects  of  the  American 
people ;  but  he  came,  as  was  his  wont,  determined  to  see 
the  best  points  in  the  national  character.  And  he  saw 
them.  His  expedition  proved  to  be  one  long  ovation.  The 
most  generous  hospitality  was  everywhere  offered  him, 
and  it  was  combined  with  a  thoughtful  kindness  which  he 
had  scarcely  anticipated.  He  had  already  many  personal 
friends  in  America ;  to  many  he  was  known  by  his  books, 
which  possessed  that  rare  power  of  making  the  personal  life 
and  character  of  their  author  real  and  vivid  to  their  readers. 
Others  knew  him  by  his  reputation  as  an  ecclesiastic,  a  man 
of  the  world,  or  a  man  of  letters ;  others  welcomed  the  oppor- 
tunity of  reciprocating  many  little  acts  of  courtesy  done  to 
American  travellers  at  Westminster  Abbey  ;  to  others  the 
memory  of  Lady  Augusta  or  of  Sir  Frederick  Bruce  was 
his  passport.  Delighted  by  his  reception,  flattered  by  the 
interest  which  was  shown  in  him,  rejoicing  —  poor  linguist 
as  he  was  —  to  find  himself  in  a  foreign  country  where 
English  was  the  spoken  language,  exhilarated  by  a  climate 
which  he  describes  as  'transplendent,  translucent,  trans- 
cendent,' he  threw  himself  into  his  new  surroundings  with 
a  zest  and  a  sympathy  which  his  hosts  could  not  fail  to 
appreciate. 

Few  could  resist  the  fascination  of  his  brilliant  social 
gifts  or  the  boyish  freshness  of  his  enthusiasms.  Prompt 
to  recognise  and  honour  every  truthful  result  of  inquiry  and 
every  worthy  act,  he  warmly  sympathised  with  good,  wher- 

-3  One  of  the  compartments  in  the  stained-glass  window  placed  by  Stanley 
over  Lady  Augusta's  grave  in  the  Chapel  of  Henry  VII.  represents  the  vessel 
which  bore  Sir  F.  Bruce's  body  back  to  England  leaving  Boston  Harbour  at 
sunset. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


VISIT  TO  AMERICA 


ever  it  was  found,  and  however  remote  it  might  be  from 
his  own  tastes  or  range  of  thought.  In  his  own  person 
he  bridged  over  gulfs  which  divide  nations,  classes,  and 
Churches.  His  simplicity  had  resisted  the  dangerous  in- 
fluences of  success.  Unassuming,  free  from  pretension  or 
self-assertion,  he  put  himself  on  a  level  with  the  commonest 
person,  without  an  effort,  and  without  a  touch  of  self-con- 
sciousness. His  natural  modesty  made  him  defer  to  those 
who  were  older  than  himself,  or  whose  position  entitled 
them  to  respect.  No  thought  of  his  own  dignity  or  of  the 
value  of  his  time  seemed  to  cross  his  mind.  He  responded 
to  the  calls  that  were  made  upon  him  on  every  side  as 
though  he  were  himself  the  most  unimportant  of  men.  His 
tact  was  unfailing,  and  it  flowed  from  the  desire  and  the 
power  to  throw  himself  into  the  feelings  and  circumstances 
of  others.  To  illustrate  his  gift  of  sympathy,  and  the  effect 
which  its  exercise  produced  in  America,  many  letters  might 
be  quoted  from  friends  in  the  United  States.  One  instance 
will,  perhaps,  suffice.  Its  triviality  constitutes  its  signifi- 
cance. Few  hard-worked  travellers  would  have  been  at 
the  pains  of  visiting  a  school  and  making  friends  with  the 
individual  boys. 

'  Our  boys,'  writes  Mr,  Knapp,  of  Plymouth,  Massachu- 
setts, 

'whom  you  made  friends  for  life  by  the  kindness  which  you 
showed  them  in  the  short  half-hour  which  you  gave  them, 
are  anxious  to  "be  taken  in  a  group  "  as  a  school,  and  thus 
appear  to  you  in  England.  As  soon  as  the  photograph  is 
finished  it  will  be  sent  for  your  acceptance. 

'  When  talking  about  their  plan  of  a  photograph,  some- 
one from  outside  said,  "  But  it  is  not  likely  that  Dean 
Stanley,  with  all  his  duties  and  interests,  will  care  to  re- 
ceive such  a  thing,  or  will  remember  you  boys,  even  if  you 
send  it."  The  reply  was  very  decided.  "  Yes,  he  will ; 
you  didn't  see  him.  He  likes  boys,  and  believes  in  them  ; 
you  can  tell  that  right  off !  " 

VOL.  II  L  L 


514 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


'  I  can  hardly  tell  you,  my  dear  friend,  the  real  joy  and 
gladness  which  your  visit  gave  to  this  home  of  ours  —  to 
young  and  old.  We  actually  forgot  that  it  was  Plymouth 
Rock  and  Pilgrim  memories  which  brought  you  down  here. 
It  somehow  seemed  to  us  as  if  your  visit  were  on  purpose 
to  see  us  and  our  boys,  in  fulfilment  of  some  long-deferred, 
half-forgotten  promise.' 

It  might  be  supposed  that  in  a  country  which  itself 
apologises  for  the  absence  of  antiquities  Stanley  would 
have  found  little  to  gratify  his  historical  tastes.  But  the 
reverse  proved  to  be  the  case.^  Though  three  centuries 
had  not  elapsed  since  the  colonisation  had  begun,  and 
though  the  face  of  American  society  was  modernised  by 
the  civilisation  of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  everywhere 
discovered  traces  of  the  primitive,  child-like  aspects  which 
are  associated  with  ancient  history.  In  the  youth  of  the 
nation  he  discovered  its  antiquity. 

American  society,  by  its  freshness,  showed  that  it  had 
not  emerged  from  the  stage  of  formation  into  that  of 
achievement.  The  independence  and  diversity  of  the 
different  States  of  America  recalled  to  his  mind  a  condition 
of  political  society  to  which  the  transition  of  the  old  Roman 
empire  into  the  empire  of  Charlemagne  afforded  the  truest 
parallel.  The  delegation  of  manual  and  mechanical  labour 
to  foreigners,  instead  of  to  natives,  appeared  to  him  an 
arrangement  which  was  more  akin  to  the  beginnings  of 
States  than  to  the  matured  development  of  European 
nations.  The  princely  munificence  of  individual  benefac- 
tors like  the  Ten  Worthy  Fathers  of  Yale,  John  Harvard, 
or  Johns  Hopkins,  transported  him  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  to  the  period  when  the  Wykehams,  the  Waynfletes, 
or  the  Wolseys  founded  some  of  the  principal  educational 
institutions  of  England. 

'  Historical  Aspects  of  the  United  States '  {Macntillan's  Magazine, 
January  1879). 


CHAP,  xxvii  INTEREST  IN  AMERICA 


And  as  a  consequence  of  this  '  near,  closely-present  an- 
tiquity '  of  the  American  States,  his  imagination  was  fired 
with  the  uncontracted  vision  of  the  vast  and  mysterious 
destiny  which  —  in  a  sense  that  could  not  belong  to  older 
nations  —  lay  before  the  American  people.  In  political, 
religious,  and  social  life  he  felt  that  the  United  States 
contained  undeveloped  potentialities  for  unknown  good 
or  evil  which  the  Old  World  no  longer  furnished,  and  that 
on  every  individual  citizen  within  its  borders,  as  well  as 
on  every  English  subject,  lay  the  great  responsibilities  of 
forming  the  character  and  directing  the  future  of  a  mighty 
child. 

To  the  study  of  American  history  the  mystery  of  the 
future  contributed  new  grandeur,  and  the  sense  of  prox- 
imity to  the  beginnings  of  the  State  added  a  novel  charm. 
Though  the  background  of  the  past  might  be  brought  nearer 
than  in  Europe  to  the  foreground  of  the  present  —  though 
the  chronological  distances  might  be  less  graduated  — 
though  the  whole  picture  might  be  foreshortened,  yet  the 
distinctions  between  ancient  and  modern  history  were  not 
less  clearly  marked  than  in  the  most  ancient  of  European 
monarchies. 

To  Stanley's  historical  imagination,  the  era  of  the 
founders  corresponded  to  the  legendary  epoch  of  other 
nations.  But  the  first  inhabitants  and  the  first  chieftains 
of  America  were  not  wrapped  in  a  mist  of  myth  :  they 
stood  out  as  real,  living,  actual  personalities.  Each  of 
the  early  colonies  had  its  tale  to  tell  of  primeval,  stirring 
romance.  The  story  of  Virginia,  for  instance,  revived  for 
Stanley's  picturesque  mind  the  dazzling  glories  of  the  age 
of  the  Virgin  Queen,  giving  life  and  individuality  to  the 
whole  group  of  brilliant  adventurers,  and,  above  all,  to  the 
figure  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  whose  nameless  grave  lies 
under  the  shadow  of  Westminster  Abbey,  but  whose  real 


516 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


monument  is  the  Old  Dominion  of  the  United  States. 
And  to  the  first  projector  of  the  scheme  succeeds  John 
Smith,  the  life  and  soul  of  the  early  settlement,  with  whose 
homely  name  is  associated  a  career  of  thrilling  romance. 
To  the  tomb  of  John  Smith  in  the  Church  of  St.  Sepulchre, 
in  the  City  of  London,  and  to  that  of  Pocahontas  in  the 
parish  church  of  Gravesend,  Stanley  made  pilgrimages 
immediately  after  his  return  to  England. 

The  same  atmosphere  of  picturesque  antiquity  envelops 
the  struggle  between  the  English  and  the  French,  when  the 
Lily  of  Bourbon  and  the  Cross  of  St.  George,  the  white 
coats  of  France  and  the  red  coats  of  England,  the  provin- 
cials in  their  hunting-shirts,  the  savages  with  their  war- 
paint, were  mingled  in  romantic  confusion  along  the  inland 
thoroughfare  of  waters,  among  trackless  wildernesses  of 
mountain  and  virgin  forest  In  spirit  the  battle  for  supre- 
macy belonged  to  the  thirteenth  century,  though  the  actual 
conflict  was  waged  in  the  prosaic  age  of  the  Hanoverians. 
The  group  of  American  statesmen  who,  in  the  War  of 
Independence,  rose  to  the  greatness  of  their  country's  des- 
tinies, seemed  to  him  to  be  cast  in  an  heroic  mould ;  they 
formed  one  of  those  groups  of  leaders  that  mark  the  creative 
epochs  which  usually  belong  to  the  infancy  of  nations ;  they 
appeared  in  the  midst  of  modern  civilisation  like  the  granite 
boulders  of  an  earlier  formation.  And,  finally,  the  great 
Civil  War  of  the  nineteenth  century,  by  which  America  had 
been  so  recently  convulsed,  was  a  struggle  which  would 
have  been  impossible  in  more  settled  conditions  of  political 
society,  and  was  comparable  only  to  the  wars  of  York  and 
Lancaster,  or  at  least  to  those  of  Cavalier  and  Roundhead. 

Nor  was  it  only  on  past  history  that  his  attention  was 
fixed.    In  the  religious  aspects  of  American  society  Stan- 

^  '  The  Historical  Aspect  of  the  American  Churches  '  (^Maanillan^ s  Maga- 
zine, June  1 879) . 


CHAP.  XXVII         ITS  RELIGIOUS  ASPECTS 


ley  found  another  most  fruitful  source  of  interest,  and  one 
which  he,  almost  alone  among  Englishmen,  was  capable  of 
cultivating.  Here,  too,  he  perceived  the  same  traces  of  a 
'young,  unformed,  and,  so  to  speak,  raw  society.'  The 
barbarous  punishments  inflicted  by  theological  intolerance, 
which  lingered  in  America  after  they  had  disappeared  in 
England,  and  the  combination  of  religious  opinions  with 
particular  strata  of  society,  were  in  his  eyes  characteristic 
of  the  crudity  of  newly-formed  communities. 

His  interest  in  the  religious  development  of  America 
was  not  confined  to  any  one  community.  The  Unitarians, 
the  Quakers,  the  Episcopalians,  the  Presbyterians,  the  Con- 
gregationalists,  the  Methodists,  the  Baptists,  the  Universal- 
ists,  claimed,  and  knew  that  they  enjoyed,  a  share  in  his 
sympathies.  Whether  he  spoke  to  the  Congregationalist 
students  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  at  Baltimore,^  or 
to  the  Presbyterians  of  the  Union  Seminary  at  New  York,^'^ 
or  to  the  bishops,  pastors,  and  members  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  at  New  York,^^  or  to  the  Baptist  ministers 
of  New  York  and  Brooklyn,^^  or  to  the  clergy  of  the  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  Church  at  New  York^  or  Boston,^^  his 
audience  felt  that  in  each  instance  the  speaker  was  sincere 
in  the  effort  to  discover  points  of  union  and  of  sympathy. 

Naturally,  however,  it  was  in  the  American  branch  of 
the  Episcopalian  Church  of  England  that  his  chief  interest 
was  manifested,  and  in  its  Churches  alone  he  preached.  In 
the  devout  sailor-hero.  Captain  John  Smith ;  in  General 
Oglethorpe,  who  was  the  synonym  in  the  mouth  of  Pope 
for  '  strong  benevolence  of  soul,'  and  in  Bishop  White,  the 
bosom  friend  of  Washington,  he  discovered  its  worthy  pro- 

^  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America:  Johns  Hopkins  University. 

''■'^  Ibid.    '  An  American  Scholar.'         ''■'^  Ibid.    '  John  Wesley.' 

29  Ibid.    Reply  to  an  address.  ^  Ibid.     The  Church  of  England.' 

21  Ibid.    '  The  Prospects  of  Liberal  Theology.' 


518 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


genitors.  To  its  future  he  looked  with  a  special  and 
personal  interest.  The  changes  which  White  and  his 
colleagues  had  made  in  the  English  Prayer  Book  were 
modelled  on  those  proposed  by  Tillotson  and  the  latitudi- 
narian  divines  of  the  reign  of  William  III.,  and  in  many 
respects  carried  out  alterations  which  Stanley  himself 
advocated  in  England.  In  the  Catechism  the  American 
Episcopal  Church  brought  out  the  spiritual  character  of  the 
Eucharist ;  in  the  choice  of  the  Psalms  they  allowed  a 
selection  which  excluded  the  more  vindictive  and  Judaic 
elements  of  the  Psalter;  they  enjoined  the  explanation 
of  the  Ten  Commandments  by  the  spirit  of  the  Two  Com- 
mandments of  the  Gospel ;  they  avoided  the  repetitions  of 
the  English  Liturgy  by  introducing  the  liberty  of  abridging 
the  services ;  they  excluded  the  Athanasian  Creed  alike 
from  their  Prayer  Book  and  their  Articles  ;  they  dispensed 
altogether  with  any  subscription  to  formularies  of  faith. 
To  the  future  of  a  Church  in  which  he  found  not  only  liberal 
principles,  but  the  '  residuary,  secular,  comprehensive '  aspect 
that  he  considered  to  be  so  excellent  a  characteristic  in  the 
National  Church  of  England,  he  looked  forward  with  con- 
fidence and  hope.  He  rejoiced  to  think  that  all  the  other 
Churches  regarded  it,  as  they  had  done  in  the  days  of 
Berkeley,  as  the  second  best,  and  that  it  was  '  still  the 
Themistocles  of  American  Churches.' 

In  his  short  and  hurried  visit  to  America,  which  lasted 
less  than  two  months,  were  crowded  a  variety  of  new  ex- 
periences. At  Boston,  for  the  greater  part  of  his  stay,  he 
was  the  guest  of  Mr.  Winthrop,  whose  'considerate  atten- 
tion could  not  be  exceeded.'  Almost  on  his  arrival  he  was 
welcomed  by  '  Longfellow  and  his  brother-in-law,  Appleton, 
with  true  interest  and  sympathising  affection.'  In  Mr.  Rice, 
the  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  he  found  a  friend  who  had 
made  all  the  arrangements  for  the  funeral  of  Sir  F.  Bruce. 
'Mr.  Rice  said,'  Stanley  writes  to  Mrs.  Drummond, 


CHAP.  XXVII 


BANQUET  AT  SALEM 


'  that  he  could  never,  to  the  end  of  his  life,  forget  the  impres- 
sion when  Augusta  pressed  his  hand  and  said,  "This  is  the 
first  time  that  I  have  met  you,  but  it  is  not  the  first  time 
that  I  have  known  you,"  and  burst  into  tears.  It  is  for  the 
sake  of  this  that  he  has  constantly  devoted  himself  to  us.' 

Two  days  after  his  arrival  in  America  he  made  a  speech 
at  the  celebration  of  the  250th  anniversary  of  the  landing 
of  Governor  Endicott  at  Salem.  He  was  surrounded  by 
guests  and  speakers  who  derived  their  names  and  lineage 
from  the  first  settlers :  on  one  side  sat  a  descendant  of 
Endicott,  the  first  governor,  on  the  other,  the  representative 
of  Winthrop,  the  first  actual  governor  of  the  colony.  '  It 
was,'  he  says,  '  as  if  one  were  sitting  at  table  far  back  in  the 
opening  of  English  or  European  history,  with  the  grandsons 
or  great-grandsons  of  Hengist  and  Horsa,  or  of  Clovis  and 
Pepin.'  Even  the  immense  length  of  the  proceedings  'was 
not  without  its  compensation,  since  it  showed  what  a  hold 
the  anniversary  had  upon  the  people.'  But  he  was  most 
impressed  by  the  strong  undercurrent 

'of  political  feeling  against  the  excesses  of  disorder  and 
corruption  in  the  State,  which  caused  the  whole  meeting 
to  be  like  a  smouldering  volcano.  Every  allusion  to  the 
necessity  of  order  and  political  purity  was  received  with 
shouts  of  applause,  and  this  reached  its  climax  when 
Story's  poem  was  recited.  I  thought  it  quite  magnificent 
in  its  tone.' 

It  is  characteristic  of  Stanley  to  find  in  Story's  Ode,  and 
in  the  reception  which  it  obtained,  signs  that  the  country 
had  within  it  the  instruments  of  regeneration  and  the 
germs  of  future  greatness.  The  gifted  poet  and  sculptor, 
who  was  himself  a  native  of  Salem,  blamed 

The  careless  trust,  that  happy  luck 
Will  save  us,  come  what  may  ; 
The  apathy  with  which  we  see 
Our  country's  dearest  interest  struck, 

Dreaming  that  things  will  right  themselves  — 
That  brings  dismay. 


520 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


He  rebuked  those  who 

Apart  in  selfish  silence  stand, 
Hating  the  danger  and  the  wrong, 

And  yet  too  busy  to  uplift  their  hand. 
And  do  the  duties  that  belong 

To  those  who  would  be  free. 

Many  travellers,  and  not  least  those  who  came  from 
England,  might  have  dwelt  on  the  evidence  which  the 
Ode  afforded  of  the  vices  of  democratic  Governments. 
Not  so  Stanley.  He  preferred  to  see  in  the  respectful 
silence  with  which  the  remonstrances  were  received  a 
proof  that  America  would  listen  to  the  voices  of  the  '  few 
noble  souls  and  high  intelligences  who  rise  above  the 
passions  of  party  and  the  sordid  interests  of  the  moment' 

'  My  own  speech,'  he  says, 

'  was  well  received.  One  remarkable  circumstance  was  that, 
when  the  health  of  the  President  of  the  United  States  was 
given,  with  the  American  national  Air,  the  guests  remained 
seated  ;  but  when  "  Our  Old  Homes  "  was  given,  with  my 
name,  and  "  God  save  the  Queen  "  was  played,  the  whole 
audience  rose.    This,  I  was  told,  was  always  done.' 

He  relates  the  incident  in  a  letter  to  the  Queen,  and 
adds  that  he  *  was  much  struck  by  the  fact  that  there  was 
no  topic  of  conversation  about  which  people  here  are  so 
eager  as  details  of  the  life  of  Your  Majesty  and  the  Royal 
Family.' 

The  next  day  Stanley  preached  for  the  Rev.  Phillips 
Brooks  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Massachusetts)  in  Trinity 
Church,  Boston,  before  a  large  congregation.^^  *  No  one,' 
writes  Bishop  Brooks,^^ 

'  who  heard  it  will  ever  forget  the  benediction  which  Dean 
Stanley  uttered  at  the  close  of  the  service  at  which  he 

32  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  'The  East  and  the  West.' 
8'  Atlantic  Monthly  Magazine,  October  1 881. 


CHAP.  XXVII 


BOSTON 


preached  in  Trinity  Church,  in  Boston,  on  the  22nd  of  Sep- 
tember, 1878.  He  had  been  but  a  few  days  in  America. 
It  was  the  first  time  that  he  had  looked  an  American  congre- 
gation in  the  face.  The  church  was  crowded  with  men  and 
women  of  whom  he  only  knew  that  to  him  they  represented 
the  New  World.  He  was  for  the  moment  the  representative 
of  English  Christianity.  And  as  he  spoke  the  solemn 
words,  it  was  not  a  clergyman  dismissing  a  congregation, 
it  was  the  Old  World  blessing  the  New  ;  it  was  England 
blessing  America.  The  voice  trembled,  while  it  grew  rich 
and  deep,  and  took  every  man's  heart  into  the  great  concep- 
tion of  the  act  that  filled  itself.' 

In  the  '  Boston  Post '  ^  appeared  a  report  of  the  sermon, 
preceded  by  a  description  of  the  preacher : 

'Soon  after  the  service  the  Dean  was  seen  near  The 
Brunswick,  the  centre  of  a  circle  of  a  few  friends,  among 
whom  was  Hon.  Mr.  Winthrop  and  Governor  Rice,  convers- 
ing in  a  most  animated  manner ;  and  we  could  not  help  ob- 
serving how  much,  in  the  expression  of  his  face,  although 
much  thinner,  he  resembled  the  late  Chief  Justice  Bigelow. 
He  was  dressed  in  a  faded  and  weather-beaten  overcoat,  and 
wore,  quite  on  the  back  of  his  head,  a  very  disreputable- 
looking  soft  hat.  Almost  immediately,  however,  he  turned, 
and,  with  the  agility  of  a  much  younger  man,  he  ran  up  the 
steps  of  his  hotel  and  disappeared.' 

Though  Stanley  considered  the  newspapers  to  be  'by 
far  the  worst  specimens  of  American  life  that  we  have  en- 
countered,' he  pleaded  guilty  to  the  hat.  'The  disreputable 
hat,'  he  tells  Mrs.  Drummond,  'has  saved  me  from  the 
difficulty  of  diving  to  the  bottom  of  the  box,  where  the  new 
hat  is  buried.' 

On  Monday,  September  23rd,  Stanley  met  a  gathering 
of  the  clergy  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  Rhode  Island  at  a  breakfast  given  by  Bishop 
(then  the  Rev.)  Phillips  Brooks.    In  reply  to  their  welcome 


3*  Boston  Post,  September  23rd,  1878. 


522 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


he  delivered  a  speech  on  the  prospects  of  Liberal  Theo- 
logy.   As  the  gathering  dispersed, 

'  the  room  for  an  instant  growing  quiet  and  sacred,  he  said  : 
"  I  will  bid  you  farewell  with  the  benediction  which  I  pro- 
nounced yesterday  in  Trinity  Church,  and  which  it  is  my 
habit  to  pronounce  on  all  the  more  important  occasions  in 
the  Abbey."  And  then,  again  came  the  same  words  of 
blessing,  with  the  same  calm  solemnity.' 

'  Wherever  he  went,  whatever  he  did,  he  carried  a  bene- 
diction with  him,'  adds  Bishop  Phillips  Brooks. 

Every  minute  which  was  not  occupied  with  public 
entertainments  and  receptions,  or  the  composition  and 
delivery  of  sermons  and  speeches,  was  devoted  to  sight- 
seeing. To  him,  the  hill  above  the  Bay  of  Plymouth 
became  a  sacred  spot,  as  he  watched  in  imagination  the 
Mayjlotver  winding  her  difficult  way  from  promontory  to 
promontory,  past  island  after  island,  and  saw  the  little  crew 
descend  upon  the  solitary  rock.  At  Salem  he  traced  the 
story  of  the  '  Scarlet  Letter,'  and  felt  the  influence  of  the 
same  haunted  atmosphere  which  had  permeated  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne.  In  Newbury  Street,  or  Commonwealth  Street, 
or  Cromwell  Street,  he  read  the  record  of  the  tenacious 
recollection  which  the  New  England  settlers  retained  of  the 
English  Civil  War.  At  Roxbury  he  stood  by  the  grave  of 
John  Eliot ;  at  Cambridge  he  compared  the  American  with 
the  English  universities ;  in  the  green  meadows  close  to 
the  village  of  Concord,  with  Emerson  at  his  side  — 

By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 
Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled. 
Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world ; 

he  realised  the  beginnings  of  the  War  of  Independence. 

On  his  way  to  Newport  he  'passed  into  a  new  State — • 
Rhode  Island  —  filled  with  stories  of  another  founder.' 


CHAP.  XXVII 


NEWPORT 


523 


The  career  and  character  of  Roger  WiUiams  suppHed 
Stanley  with  fresh  elements  of  romantic  interest,  as  he 
followed  the  eccentric  enthusiast  through  wooded  hill  and 
valley,  or  watched  him  threading  his  way  in  his  solitary 
canoe  till  he  'unfurled  the  banner  of  religious  toleration' 
on  the  site  of  the  City  of  Providence. 

At  Newport  he  was  the  guest  of  George  Bancroft,  the 
historian,  'a  wonderful  old  man  of  eighty-two,  with  all  his 
faculties  about  him,  and  driving  his  two  horses  up  hill  and 
down  dale,  only  restrained  by  the  remonstrances  of  his 
negro  servant.'  At  Bancroft's  house  all  the  celebrities  of 
the  neighbourhood  gathered  to  meet  him.  *  Every  person,' 
he  writes,  'that  I  meet,  I  examine,  and  in  this  way  knowl- 
edge increases  like  a  snowball.'  But  apart  from  the  living 
interests  of  Newport,  the  place  possessed  a  twofold  charm 
in  its  associations  with  Berkeley  and  with  Channing.  In 
the  rock  overhanging  the  beach  was  the  cave  where  Berke- 
ley composed  'The  Minute  Philosopher';  his  wooden  house 
('Whitehall')  was  still  standing;  the  various  parts  of  his 
organ  are  used  in  the  Rhode  Island  churches  ;  Yale  College 
treasured  his  portrait  and  bequest  of  books ;  his  chair  of 
state  was  prized  by  the  College  of  Hartford.  '  Strange,' 
he  exclaims,  'that  during  my  seven  years  at  Oxford  I 
should  have  stood  in  the  Cathedral  over  his  grave ! '  New- 
port had  also  been  the  scene  of  Channing's  early  life.  'No 
spot  on  earth,'  said  the  great  Unitarian  minister,  '  helped 
to  form  me  like  that  beach.' 

On  his  way  from  Newport  to  Philadelphia  he  paid  a 
flying  visit,  of  three  hours'  duration,  to  New  York,  '  to  catch 
the  American  Revisers  of  the  Bible  Version,  who  were  there 
for  that  one  day  only.  They  received  me  with  the  greatest 
delight.'  At  Philadelphia  he  was  the  guest  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  G.  W.  Childs,  lodged  'in  a  white  marble  palace  with 
blue-satin  rooms,  our  host  and  hostess  letting  us  do  what- 


524 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


ever  we  wished,  asking  everyone  to  meet  us  that  they 
thought  we  should  like  to  meet,  or  that  they  thought  would 
like  to  see  us.'  In  St.  James's  Church,  Philadelphia,  he 
preached  on  September  29,  1878.-^    '  I  preached,'  he  says, 

'  once  more  than  I  intended  ;  but  I  could  not  resist  the 
pleasure  that  it  gave  to  our  kind  hosts.  Grove  corrected 
the  proof-sheets  of  the  report.  The  printing  was  of  the 
most  illiterate  kind.  The  reporters  expressed  a  particular 
wish  to  have  precisely  the  passage  in  which  I  had  referred 
to  Joe  Hooker,'^  one  of  the  generals  in  the  war  of  1862. 
It  was,  of  course,  Richard  Hooker.' 

On  the  same  Sunday  Stanley  attended  a  negro  Metho- 
dist meeting-house. 

'The  preacher  was  a  mulatto,  not  wholly  illiterate,  but 
with  a  rant  and  raving  beyond  anything  I  ever  heard,  to 
which  from  time  to  time  the  negroes  responded  by  loud 
shouts.  He  had,  evidently,  a  confused  notion  that  I  was 
there,  for  he  spoke  of  defying  the  arguments  of  Dean  Alford, 
and  then  proceeded,  without  naming  him,  to  denounce  the 
doctrine  of  Farrar.^''  At  every  expression  of  sulphurous 
torments  the  old  negroes  absolutely  screamed  for  joy.  It 
was,  I  must  say,  a  most  hideous  exhibition,  the  more  so  as 
from  the  words  he  let  drop  the  preacher  himself  knew 
better.' 

From  Philadelphia  Stanley  travelled  by  Baltimore  to 
Washington.  'Every  particle  of  expense,'  he  says,  'of 
trains,  of  carrying,  &c.,  in  spite  of  all  remonstrance,  from 
the  moment  we  entered  Philadelphia  till  we  reached 
Washington,  was  paid  by  Mr.  Childs  or  his  friends.  We 
cannot  help  calling  him  the  "Angel  of  the  Church  of 
Philadelphia."'  Washington,  'rough  and  unfinished,  yet 
with  all  the  appearance  of  an  imperial  city '  ;  Mount 
Vernon,  '  the  home  and  grave  of  Washington '  ;  Baltimore, 

^  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  '  The  Holy  Angels.' 
^  Nicknamed  '  Fighting  Joe.' 

Referring  to  Archdeacon  Farrar's  sermons  on  '  Eternal  Hope.' 


CHAP.  XXVII 


IRVINGTON 


where  he  addressed  the  students  of  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University ;  Richmond,  haunted  by  the  shades  of  John 
Smith  and  Pocahontas,  adorned  with  the  statues  of  the 
famous  Virginians  who  led  the  War  of  Independence,  and 
devastated  by  the  havoc  of  the  still  recent  struggle  between 
the  North  and  the  South  —  were  all  visited  in  rapid  succes- 
sion. 'The  passage  through  these  great  cities,'  he  writes, 
'  resembles  the  successive  slides  of  a  magic-lantern  —  new 
scenes,  new  faces,  new  incidents  in  each.' 

Sunday,  October  6th,  found  Stanley  at  New  York,  where 
he  preached  for  his  friend  Dr.  Washburn  in  the  Calvary 
Church.^  '  Dear  Dr.  Washburn,'  he  wrote  in  the  spring 
of  1881,  after  his  friend's  death, 

'how  well  I  remember  preaching  in  that  great  Calvary, 
and  my  visit  to  him  in  the  latter  days  of  my  stay  in  New 
York  !  He  was  of  "  that  small  transfigured  band  whom  the 
world  cannot  tame"  —  the  band  of  Falkland,  Leighton, 
Whichcote,  Arnold,  Maurice.    Peace  be  with  him  ! ' 

On  the  Monday  following  he  became  the  guest  of  Mr. 
Cyrus  Field,  at  Irvington,  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson. 
'  Uncle  Cyrus,  as  I  call  him,'  he  writes  to  Mrs.  Drummond, 
'is  perfection.'  Here  he  was  surrounded  by  associations 
with  Washington  Irving,  and  close  to  the  scene  of  the 
execution  of  Major  Andre.  The  genius  loci  was  in  one 
sense  peculiarly  congenial  to  Stanley's  disposition.  From 
his  sunny  cottage  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  Irving  had 
diffused  his  genial  spirit,  knitting  together  by  the  bonds 
of  domestic  and  family  sympathy  two  divided  nations, 
teaching  America  to  take  pride  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
and  to  regard  Stratford-on-Avon  and  Abbotsford  as  part  of 
their  own  national  heritage. 

In  the  intervals  of  receptions  held  in  his  honour  Stanley 
•explored  the  whole  story  of  Major  Andre's  capture  and 
execution.' 

**  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  'The  Perplexities  of  Life.' 


526 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


'  The  execution  had  been  on  the  other  side  of  the  river, 
and  Cyrus  Field  had  never  been  there  himself.  It  was  a 
much  more  secluded  region,  the  villages  and  names  all 
Dutch.  We  found  a  most  intelligent  Dutch  doctor,  who 
said  that  he  knew  Egypt  better  from  "  Sinai  and  Palestine  " 
than  from  anything  he  had  ^.ever  read  ;  and  he  took  us  to 
an  old  man  of  ninety-two,  whose  mother  had  been  present 
at  the  death,  and  who  himself  had  seen  the  open  grave 
when  the  bones  were  removed  in  1824.  At  Albany,  after- 
wards, we  saw  the  very  papers  that  were  drawn  out  of  his 
boots,  or  rather  his  stockings,  at  the  time  of  his  capture. 
It  is  astonishing  what  an  interest  still  attaches  to  the  story 
here.' 

At  Albany  Stanley  —  for  the  first  time  prostrated  by 
the  fatigue  of  incessant  travelling,  the  heat,  the  round  of 
festivities,  and  the  excitement  —  was  obliged  to  alter  his 
plans  —  'a  change  which  Cyrus  Field  bore  like  an  angel, 
immediately  throwing  himself,  though  to  his  great  disap- 
pointment, into  our  new  arrangements.'  He  decided,  after 
a  rest  of  a  single  day,  to  '  proceed  straight  to  Niagara, 
the  climax  of  our  tour.'  His  description  of  the  Falls  illus- 
trates his  constant  habit  of  regarding  natural  scenery  in 
its  historical  associations,  or  as  the  stage  of  human  action. 
'  In  that  memorable  hour,'  he  says  in  a  speech  at  the  Cen- 
tury Club  in  New  York,^^ 

*  when  for  the  first  time  I  stood  before  the  cataracts  of 
Niagara,  I  seemed  to  see  a  vision  of  the  fears  and  hopes  of 
America.  It  was  midnight,  the  moon  was  full,  and  I  saw 
from  the  Suspension  Bridge  the  ceaseless  contortion,  con- 
fusion, whirl,  and  chaos  which  burst  forth  in  clouds  of  foam 
from  that  immense  central  chasm  which  divides  the  Amer- 
ican from  the  British  Dominion  ;  and  as  I  looked  on  that 
ever-changing  movement,  and  listened  to  that  everlasting 
roar,  I  saw  an  emblem  of  the  devouring  activity  and  cease- 
less, restless,  beating  whirlpool  of  existence  in  the  United 
States.  But  into  the  moonlight  sky  there  rose  a  cloud  of 
spray  twice  as  high  as  the  Falls  themselves,  silent,  majes- 

83  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  '  The  Century  Club.' 


CHAP.  XXVII 


QUEBEC 


527 


tic,  immovable.  In  that  silver  column,  glittering  in  the 
moonlight,  I  saw  an  image  of  the  future  of  American  des- 
tiny, of  the  pillar  of  light  which  should  emerge  from  the 
distractions  of  the  present  —  a  likeness  of  the  buoyancy 
and  hopefulness  which  characterises  you,  both  as  individ- 
uals and  as  a  nation.' 

Hurrying  on  from  Niagara  to  see  Lord  Dufferin,  who 
was  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  from  Canada,  he  met  the 
Governor-General  at  Montreal,  and  accompanied  him  to 
Quebec.  In  the  cathedral,  on  October  20th,  he  preached 
on  the  'Uses  of  Conflict.*'  The  magnificent  view  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  from  the  terrace  of  the  Citadel  seemed  to 
him  to  symbolise  the  richness  and  fulness  of  Christianity. 
'The  stream  of  the  highest  Christian  truth,'  he  says,**^ 

*  resembles  the  mighty  river,  the  glory  of  the  Western 
World,  which  flows  beneath  the  heights  of  Quebec,  and 
which  derives  its  force  and  majesty  from  that  peculiar  con- 
formation of  this  continent  which  has  made  it  the  depository 
and  the  outlet  of  all  that  vast  volume  of  waters  which,  in 
hidden  springs,  and  immense  lakes,  and  world-renowned 
cataracts,  discharge  themselves  into  its  broad  channel,  and 
make  it  the  highway  of  the  nations.  Such  is  true  Chris- 
tianity, accepting  and  including  all  the  elements  of  life 
which,  from  the  inland  seas  of  far  antiquity,  or  the  rushing 
torrents  of  impetuous  action,  or  the  dissolving  foam  of  ethe- 
real speculation,  find  their  way  into  its  capacious  bosom.' 

From  Quebec  and  its  thrilling  associations,  with  '  the 
little,  sickly,  red-haired  English  hero,  General  Wolfe,'  and 
'  his  chivalrous  adversary,  the  French  Montcalm,'  he  made 
his  way  to  Ticonderoga.  The  ruined  fortress  stands  on  a 
promontory  overhanging  Lake  Champlain.    '  It  is,'  he  says, 

*  almost  the  only  ruin  in  the  United  States,  and  the  most 
interesting  spot  we  have  seen  after  Niagara '  — '  the  scene 
of  the  "  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  the  Loch  Katrine  of 
America,  the  great  thoroughfare  of  last  century.' 


Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America:  '  The  Uses  of  Conflict.' 


528 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


For  Stanley  the  spot  had  two  special  fascinations. 
The  name,  in  the  first  place,  was  already  familiar  to  him 
from  the  monuments  in  Westminster  Abbey  to  two  English 
officers  killed  at  Ticonderoga  in  the  French  and  English 
war  in  1758.  One  monument  is  to  Lord  Howe,  erected  by 
the  '  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,'  the  other  is  to  Colonel 
Townsend,  with  the  fortress  and  two  Red  Indians  carved 
upon  it.  It  was  also,  in  the  second  place,  associated  with 
a  Highland  legend  which  he  was  fond  of  repeating,  and 
which  he  told,  not  for  the  first  time,  to  his  two  companions 
as  they  approached  Ticonderoga  in  the  dim  twilight  of  an 
autumn  morning.*^ 

In  the  midst  of  the  scenery  described  in  the  '  Highland 
Widow,'  at  the  head  of  the  river  Awe,  close  to  Loch  Awe, 
and  in  full  sight  of  Ben  Cruachan,  stands  the  ancient  hall 
of  Campbell  of  Inverawe.  There,  towards  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  Campbell  had  entertained  a  party  of  guests. 
The  guests  were  gone,  and  their  host  was  left  alone.  He 
was  roused  by  a  violent  knocking  at  the  gate,  and  was  sur- 
prised to  see  one  of  his  late  guests,  Stuart  of  Appin,  with 
torn  garments  and  dishevelled  hair,  standing  without.  *  I 
have  killed  a  man,'  he  said,  *  and  am  pursued.  I  beseech 
you,  let  me  in.  Swear  on  your  dirk  that  you  will  not  betray 
me.'  Campbell  swore  the  solemn  oath,  and  hid  the  fugitive. 
He  had  hardly  done  so  when  he  was  roused  by  a  second 
knocking.  The  pursuers  were  at  the  gate.  '  Your  cousin 
Donald  has  been  killed  !  Where  is  the  murderer.'''  True 
to  his  oath,  Inverawe  returned  an  evasive  answer,  and  sent 
the  avengers  of  blood  in  the  wrong  direction. 

That  night  the  bloodstained  Donald  appeared  to 
Campbell  as  he  slept,  with  these  words :  *  Inverawe ! 
Inverawe !  blood  has  been  shed;  shield  not  the  murderer! 

"  He  has  told  it  at  length  in  Eraser's  Magazine  for  October  1878  : 
'  Inverawe  and  Ticonderoga.' 


CHAP.  XXVII    INVERAWE  AND  TICONDEROGA 


529 


In  the  gray  of  the  morning  Campbell  hid  Stuart  of  Appin 
in  a  cave  on  Ben  Cruachan  ;  but  when  darkness  again  fell 
the  bloodstained  figure  once  more  appeared  in  the  visions 
of  the  night  :  'Inverawe!  Inverawe  !  blood  lias  been  shed; 
shield  not  the  murderer.'  As  day  broke  he  sought  the  cave 
on  the  mountain ;  but  the  murderer  had  fled.  Again 
Campbell  slept ;  and  again  the  figure  of  the  bloodstained 
Donald  rose  before  him,  and  said,  '  Inverazve !  Inveraive ! 
blood  has  been  shed.  We  shall  not  meet  again  till  ive  meet 
at  Ticonderoga.'' 

The  triple  apparition  and  its  mysterious  message  sank 
into  the  memory  of  Campbell  of  Inverawe,  though  he  vainly 
inquired  the  meaning  of  the  final  rendezvous.  In  1758  he 
went  out  to  America  with  the  42nd  Highlanders,  to  take 
part  in  the  war  between  France  and  England.  On  the 
eve  of  an  engagement  the  General  came  to  the  officers, 
and  said,  'We  must  not  tell  Campbell  the  name  of  the 
fortress  we  attack  to-morrow.  It  is  Ticonderoga.  Let  us 
call  it  Fort  George.'  In  the  assault  Campbell  was  mortally 
wounded.  As  he  lay  dying,  he  said  to  the  General,  '  You  have 
deceived  me.    I  have  seen  Iiini  again.  This  is  Ticonderoga.' 

Stanley  determined  to  explore  the  spot,  and,  if  possible, 
discover  the  traces  of  Campbell  of  Inverawe.  At  Hartford, 
in  Connecticut,  he  had  met  Bishop  Williams,  '  the  flower  of 
the  American  episcopate,'  who  had  made  a  special  study  of 
the  regions  of  the  Lakes,  and  told  him  the  story.  Through 
the  Bishop  he  eventually  found  the  object  of  his  search. 
At  the  time  of  his  visit  to  Ticonderoga  a  mound  of  grassy 
hillocks  alone  marked  the  graves  of  the  British  officers. 
But  in  the  evening,  at  Saratoga,  he  found  in  Lossing's 
'  Revolutionary  War '  a  description  of  the  burial  at  Fort 
Edward  of  Jane  Macrea,  whose  tragical  story  formed  the 
basis  of  'The  Last  of  the  Mohicans.'  Her  grave  is  near  an 
old  brown  headstone,  on  which  are  inscribed  the  words  : 
VOL.  II  MM 


530 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


'  Here  lyes  the  body  of  Duncan  Campbell  of  Inversaw  (sic), 
Esq.,  Major  to  the  old  Highland  Regiment,  aged  55  years, 
who  died  the  lyth  July,  1758,  of  the  wounds  lie  received  in 
the  attack  of  the  entrenchments  of  Ticonderoga,  or  Carillon, 
Sih  July,  1758.'    '  My  first  impulse,'  says  Stanley, 

'  was  to  return  to  the  spot.  But  we  were  already  at  Sara- 
toga, Fort  Edward  was  far  in  our  rear,  and  we  were  due  at 
Concord  on  the  following  night.  We  were  forced  to  aban- 
don the  actual  visit ;  but  that  day  I  wrote  to  Bishop  Wil- 
liams, stating  that  wp  had  found  the  grave,  and  asking 
whether  any  particulars  could  be  procured  of  the  reason 
or  manner  of  his  burial.' 

From  Bishop  Williams  he  received  an  account  of  the 
tombstone,  which  had  been  removed  to  the  enclosure  of 
the  Gilchrists,  a  family  which  claimed  Duncan  Campbell 
as  a  near  relation.  On  his  return  to  England  he  followed 
up  the  story  in  all  its  details  and  ramifications.  He  iden- 
tified the  actual  spot  where  Stuart  of  Appin  had  murdered 
Donald  Campbell ;  he  traced  the  flight  of  the  murderer  to 
Inverawe  ;  he  visited  the  Ghost  Room  at  the  Castle ;  he 
sought  out  every  member  of  the  two  families  who  could 
add  fresh  particulars,  and  finally  completed  his  narrative  by 
the  addition  of  a  legend  which  described  the  appearance 
of  Inverawe,  'in  full  Highland  regimentals,'  to  announce 
to  his  foster-brother  in  Scotland  his  death  at  Ticonderoga 
in  America. 

The  story  is  told  here  at  length  because  it  illustrates,  not 
only  the  variety  of  Stanley's  interests,  but  the  pertinacity 
with  which,  even  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  he  hunted 
down,  and  realised  upon  the  actual  spot,  every  detail  of 
any  incident,  legendary,  fictitious,  or  historical,  which  had 
impressed  his  imagination. 

Till  he  reached  the  shores  of  Lake  George,  his  one 
disappointment  throughout  the  tour  had  been  the  absence 


CHAP.  XXVII 


STOCKBRIDGE 


of  the  autumnal  colouring  of  the  American  woodland 
scenery.  On  the  shores  of  Lake  George,  however,  he 
found  a  maple  '  like  a  burning  bush  '  growing  from  the 
same  stem  as  an  oak-tree.  The  growth  seemed  to  him 
an  emblem  of  the  bonds  of  union  which  united  England 
and  America. 

'  Of  that  unbroken  union,'  he  says  in  his  speech  at  the 
Century  Club,*^ 

'there  seemed  to  me  a  likeness  when,  on  the  beautiful 
shores  of  Lake  George,  the  Loch  Katrine  of  America,  I 
saw  a  maple  and  an  oak  growing  together  from  the  same 
stem  —  the  brilliant,  fiery  maple,  the  emblem  of  America; 
the  gnarled  and  twisted  oak,  the  emblem  of  England.  So 
may  the  two  nations  always  rise  together,  so  different  each 
from  each,  and  representing  so  distinct  a  future,  yet  each 
springing  from  the  same  ancestral  root,  each  bound  together 
by  the  same  healthful  sap  and  the  same  vigorous  growth  ! ' 

After  a  day  at  Saratoga,  'the  Sedan  of  England  in 
America,'  he  travelled  to  Concord,  to  stay  with  Emerson 
—  'a  very  interesting,  though  melancholy,  visit ;  his  mind 
unbroken,  but  his  loss  of  words  most  distressing.'  Re- 
tracing his  steps,  he  paid  a  visit  to  Stockbridge,  where  the 
huge  boulder  which  marks  the  '  grave  of  the  Stockbridge 
Indians,  the  friends  of  our  fathers,'  placed  him  on  the 
boundary  of  those  days  when  the  savage  and  the  civilised 
man  still  met,  like  Goth  and  Roman,  '  in  the  varied 
vicissitudes  of  peace  or  war.'  Here  he  once  more  became, 
and  for  the  rest  of  his  stay  in  America  remained,  the  guest 
of  Mr.  Cyrus  Field.    '  I  am,'  he  writes  to  his  sister, 

'extremely  glad  that  I  did  not  lose  this  place.  It  is  a 
village  buried  among  the  Berkshire  Hills,  the  scene  of  the 
first  Indian  missions,  the  burial-place  of  the  Indians  of  this 
part  of  America,  the  residence  of  the  great  Calvinist, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  the  birth-  and  burial-place  of  this 
recent  family  of  the  Fields.' 

^'■^  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  '  The  Century  Club.' 

M  M  2 


532 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


In  the  village  church  of  Stockbridge,  on  October  27th, 
1878,  he  preached  his  fifth  sermon.*^  The  rigid  statements 
of  Jonathan  Edwards,  repugnant  though  his  theological 
system  was  to  all  Stanley's  strongest  feelings,  were  not  to 
be  wholly  condemned. 

'  Nothing,  so  we  sa)'-,  can  be  gleaned  from  the  thorny 
speculations  with  which,  on  this  spot,  the  most  famous  of 
the  American  divines  in  the  previous  age  laboured  to  build 
up  the  hard  system  of  Calvin  ;  yet  even  in  that  hard  system 
those  who  most  dissent  from  it  may  find  grains  of  pure 
gold  ;  even  in  the  most  unlovely  of  Christian  theologians, 
whether  in  Geneva  or  in  Massachusetts,  there  is  still  some- 
thing to  invigorate  and  to  stimulate,  when  we  reflect  that 
they  were  striving  to  fortify  the  eternal  principles  of  truth 
and  righteousness  against  the  temptations  which  beset  us 
all.' 

The  tour  in  America  closed  with  a  visit  to  New  York. 
'The  last  week,'  he  tells  Mrs.  Drummond, 

'was  indeed  a  whirl.  On  Wednesday,  October  29th,  a 
reception  of  the  Baptists.  On  Friday,  a  sermon  at  All 
Saints,*^  the  Mother-Church  of  New  York,  in  the  morning, 
and  a  reception  of  the  Methodists  in  the  evening.  On 
Saturday,  a  reception  at  the  Century  Club,  with  speeches, 
and  another  at  a  smaller  club  in  the  afternoon.  On 
Sunday,  a  sermon  at  Grace  Church  (Dr.  Porter's),  the 
fashionable  church,  in  the  morning,  and  at  Holy  Trinity*'' 
—  popular  and  Low  Church  —  in  the  evening.  On  Mon- 
day, a  reception  of  the  Baptists,  and  then  a  reception  and 
a  breakfast  of  the  clergy,  with  speeches ;  in  the  afternoon, 
the  autumn  reception  at  the  American  Museum  ;  in  the 
evening,  a  large  party  at  the  Fields'.  On  Tuesday,  a  visit 
to  the  Episcopal  College,  and  to  the  fair  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Cathedral,  and  an  immense  reception  at  the 
Fields'  in  the  evening.  On  Wednesday,  a  visit  to  the 
schools,  and  our  embarkation  on  the  Bothnia  at  2  p.m. 
Many  of  our  friends  came  to  see  the  last  of  us.  Cyrus 


**  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America  :  '  There  is  nothing.' 

/Md.  :  '  The  Unity  and  Diversity  of  Christendom.' 
«  Hid  :  '  The  Nature  of  Man.'        *6         .  .  The  Nature  of  God.' 


CHAP.  XXVII  GENERAL  IMPRESSIONS 


533 


remained  to  the  very  end.  Words  cannot  express  what  he 
has  been  in  perpetual  kindness,  and  entertainment  in  every 
sense  of  the  vi^ord.  And  so  the  splendid  dream  is  over ! 
Not  one  single  day  that  did  not  teem  with  interest.' 

'The  whole  journey,'  he  tells  the  Queen  in  a  letter 
written  immediately  after  his  return, 

'  has  given  me  a  deeper  impression  of  the  great  responsi- 
bilities of  England.  The  Americans  are  evidently  open  to 
the  strongest  influence  from  our  example,  both  for  good 
and  evil.  They  eagerly  catch  at  any  failure  in  public  hon- 
esty, like  the  misconduct  of  the  Glasgow  directors,  as  an 
excuse  for  their  own  corruptions,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
any  high  character  in  the  high  places  of  the  old  country 
leaves  a  lasting  impression  upon  them.  How  very  much 
they  honoured  my  dear  Augusta  ! ' 

'It  is  doubtful,'  says  Stanley,  'whether  we  could,  any  of 
us,  have  carried  on  the  war  much  longer  at  the  rate  of 
marching  we  had  adopted.'  Without  the  devoted  care  of  the 
two  friends  who  accompanied  him  from  England  his  visit, 
as  he  himself  said  in  his  speech  at  the  Century  Club,  'could 
never  have  been  accomplished.'  It  was  not  the  first  time 
that  he  had  acknowledged  the  debts  which,  on  other  occa- 
sions, he  owed  to  Mr.  (now  Sir  George)  Grove.  Both  in 
his  '  Sinai  and  Palestine  '  and  in  his  '  Lectures  on  the  History 
of  the  Jewish  Church  '  he  referred  with  '  unfailing  pleasure' 
to  the  assistance  that  his  friend  had  rendered  him  in  all 
questions  connected  with  sacred  history  and  geography. 
Now  the  obligation  was  of  a  different  kind.  '  When,  in 
after-years,'  he  tells  his  American  audience, 

'you  read  at  the  end  of  some  elaborate  essay  on  the  history 
of  music  or  on  Biblical  geography  the  name  of  George 
Grove,  you  will  recall  with  pleasure  the  incessant  question- 
ings, the  eager  desire  for  knowledge,  the  wide  and  varied 
capacity  for  all  manner  of  instruction,  which  you  experi- 
enced in  your  conversation  with  him  here.  And  when,  also, 
hereafter  there  shall  reach  to  your  shores  the  fame  of  the 


534 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


distinguished  physician,  Dr.  Harper,  whether  in  England 
or  in  New  Zealand,  you  will  be  the  more  rejoiced  because  it 
will  bring  before  you  the  memory  of  the  youthful  and  bloom- 
ing student  who  inspected  your  hospitals  with  such  keen 
appreciation,  so  impartially  sifting  the  good  from  the  evil.' 

The  two  friends  were  rewarded  for  the  care  which  they 
had  lavished  on  their  charge.  The  repose  of  the  voyage  dis- 
persed any  evil  effects  which  his  exertions  might  have  pro- 
duced, and  he  reached  England  refreshed  and  exhilarated 
by  his  expedition,  stronger  in  health,  and  more  cheerful  in 
spirits  than  he  had  been  since  the  death  of  his  wife. 

At  home  he  had  at  times  begun  to  despair  of  the  present 
generation,  and  to  feel  that  '  people  do  not  care  for  anything 
I  undertake  or  support.'  The  want  of  sympathy,  fancied 
or  real,  depressed  and  paralysed  his  energies.  In  America, 
on  the  contrary,  his  hopes  of  the  future,  and  with  them  his 
own  confidence,  were  revived.  He  felt  in  his  own  renewed 
vigour  the  influence  of  the  buoyant  cheerfulness  of  the 
nation  :  men  and  women  of  all  denominations,  wherever 
he  went,  had  hung  upon  his  words  ;  everywhere  he  had 
received  that  warm  appreciation,  without  which  he  could 
not  be  his  best  self.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the  interest  taken 
in  him  assumed  a  ludicrous  aspect.  '  I  consoled  myself,' 
wrote  a  Baptist  minister  who  had  missed  seeing  him,  'with 
the  hope  of  a  meeting  beyond  the  Resurrection  morn,  with 
ample  time  for  more  than  a  hurried  interview  on  the  cars.' 
Awaiting  his  arrival  in  America  was  a  letter  from  a  lady, 
telling  him  that  a  farmer  in  Ohio  had  christened  his  eldest 
son  '  Dean  Stanley,'  and  requesting  him  to  contribute 
liberally  to  the  education  of  '  the  little  Dean  Stanley.' 
But  he  could  not  doubt  that  the  kindly  feeling  towards 
him  was  as  warm  as  it  was  general.  The  result  is,  that  his 
'  Addresses  and  Sermons  in  America '  is  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  volumes  that  he  ever  published. 


CHAP.  XXVII       '  ADDRESSES  AND  SERMONS ' 


535 


The  volume  contains  the  main  features  of  his  own 
religious  opinions,  hopes,  fears,  and  ideals.  No  man,  it  may 
be  truly  said,  could  have  delivered  these  '  Addresses  and 
Sermons '  who  was  bred  and  trained  in  any  narrower  ecclesi- 
astical organisation  than  the  Church  of  England.  They 
are  the  special  product  of  the  wide,  comprehensive,  chari- 
table, national  institution  which  he  saw  symbolised  and 
represented  in  Westminster  Abbey.  They  are  also,  both 
in  their  spirit  and  their  form,  characteristic  of  the  speaker. 
From  none  of  his  contemporaries  could  such  utterances 
have  fallen  with  the  same  beauty  and  fertility  of  historical 
illustration,  with  the  same  enthusiasm  of  conviction  and 
consistency  of  lifelong  practice,  or  with  an  equal  prospect 
of  sympathetic  attention. 

Those  who  search  the  pages  of  the  volume  for  definite 
expression  of  theological  opinion  will  be,  perhaps,  disap- 
pointed. Here,  as  elsewhere,  there  are  the  shrinking  from 
theological  affirmations,  the  reticence  on  questions  of 
doctrine,  the  reluctance  to  formulate  dogmas,  which  were 
sometimes  misunderstood,  even  by  his  friends.  But  the 
'  Addresses  and  Sermons '  glow  with  enthusiasm  for  high 
Christian  spiritual  morality ;  they  are  suffused  with  an 
atmosphere  of  simple,  personal  faith  ;  they  are  inspired  by 
a  firm,  yet  humble,  confidence  in  the  reality  of  Christian 
hopes  ;  they  bear  on  every  page  the  traca  of  a  deep  and 
reverent  love  of  the  Scriptures. 

Stanley's  reserve  on  many  grave  theological  questions 
might  be  misunderstood,  if  taken  by  itself,  for  depreciation 
of  Christian  doctrines.  Interpreted  by  his  words,  it  will 
be  seen  that  the  inference  is  unfounded.  His  silence  rather 
proceeded  from  the  determination  to  take  for  his  standard 
of  doctrine  the  undisputed  teaching  of  Christ  and  the 
Apostles,  and  not  the  metaphysical  subtleties  which  were 
the  after-growth  of  subsequent  controversies.    The  Gos- 


536 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


pel,  he  insists,  is  very  simple.  In  the  plain  statements 
of  Holy  Writ  the  great  central  truths,  which  feed  the 
human  soul,  may  be  read  by  the  least  instructed,  written 
as  with  a  sunbeam.  To  the  fundamental  doctrines  of 
Christianity,  as  expressed  in  Scripture  and  the  early  Creeds, 
he  clung  as  for  his  life.  By  his  belief  in  them  all  his  actions 
were  governed  ;  on  them  were  based  the  premisses  of  all 
his  reasoning  on  religious  and  moral  questions.  But  his 
interest  in  theology  was  historical  rather  than  direct.  By 
preference,  as  in  the  American  'Addresses  and  Sermons,' 
he  enlarged  on  the  moral  characteristics  of  Christianity,  on 
the  social  dispositions  which  Christ  inculcated,  on  the  appar- 
ently natural  workings  of  God  in  the  world  and  in  history. 
'  The  theology  of  the  Bible,'  he  says, 

'  is  something  beside  and  beyond,  something  greater  and 
vaster  than  the  theology  of  each  particular  Church  or  age. 
It  is  in  the  various  aspects  of  the  theology  of  the  Bible  — 
which  is  also  the  theology  of  European  literature,  the 
theology  of  great  men,  the  theology  of  the  saints,  and  the 
theology  of  the  poor  and  of  little  children  —  that  we  may 
hope  to  see  the  face  of  God.' 

Or,  again : 

'"Who  is  this,"  we  may  once  more  ask,  "that  cometh 
from  Edom,  that  is  glorious  in  His  apparel,  travelling  in 
the  greatness  of  His  strength,  leading  His  people  through 
the  deep,  as  a  horse  through  the  wilderness,  that  they 
should  not  stumble  } "  It  is  indeed  Christ  Himself.  It  is 
the  Spirit,  the  Eternal' Spirit  of  His  life  and  of  His  death, 
of  His  acts  and  of  His  words.  It  is  those  who  see  in  Him 
something  vaster  and  higher  than  any  single  Church,  or 
than  any  single  leader  ;  who  see  in  truth  something  greater 
than  any  one  of  the  particular  forms  of  truth  ;  who  see  in 
love  and  charity  something  grander  even  than  faith  or 
hope,  even  than  agreement  in  opinion,  even  than  uniformity 
in  worship.' 

The  permanent  element  of  Christianity,  which  has 
'survived  the  conflicts  of  eighteen  centuries,'  'inspired 


CHAP.  XXVII       'ADDRESSES  AND  SERMONS' 


537 


the  course  of  States  and  nations,'  and  '  commanded  the 
reverential  attention  of  the  highest  intellects,'  is  some- 
thing wider  and  fuller  than  '  the  Christianity  of  Nicaea,  or 
Geneva,  or  Westminster,  or  Augsburg,  or  the  Vatican.' 
The  form  of  Christianity  which  was  '  defended  by  Paley 
in  his  "  Evidences,"  by  Lardner  in  his  "  Credibilia,"  by 
Butler  in  his  "  Sermons  "  and  "  Analogy,"  by  Pascal  in  his 
"Thoughts,"  and  Channing  in  his  "Discourses,"  was  not 
the  Calvinist,  or  the  Lutheran,  or  the  Wesleyan,  or  the 
Tridentine,  or  the  Racovian  Creed.'  It  is,  rather,  the 
religion  which  has  'animated  the  poor,  the  humble,  the  child- 
like, the  saint-like  of  all  persuasions.'  The  perpetual 
under-current  of  spiritual  devotion  is  to  be  traced  in  the 
'  elementary  graces '  and  in  the  great  moral  principles 
which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  '  the  barbarous  phraseology  in 
which  the  sentiments  of  the  poor,  living  or  dying,  are  often 
expressed.'  The  theology  that  exercises  a  natural  ascend- 
ency over  the  minds  of  educated  men  is  one 

'which,  whilst  comprehending  all  the  wholesome  elements 
of  thought  at  work  within  the  world,  yet  holds  that  the 
Christian  belief  is  large  enough  to  contain  them  ;  which 
insists,  not  on  the  ceremonial,  the  dogmatic,  or  the  porten- 
tous, but  on  the  moral  side  of  religion  ;  which  insists  on 
the  spirit,  not  on  the  letter —  on  the  meaning,  not  on  the 
words  —  on  the  progressive,  not  on  the  stationary  character 
of  the  Bible.' 

'Religious  feeling,'  says  Stanley,  'religious  doctrine, 
religious  ordinances,  are  of  no  value  except  they  produce 
in  our  lives  justice,  integrity,  honesty,  purity,  gentleness, 
modesty.'  He  records  the  saying  of  the  old  Scottish  Meth- 
odist who,  on  his  deathbed,  regretted  his  denunciations  of 
the  heresies  of  the  rival  sects  on  either  side  of  the  street 
where  he  lived.  'The  street  I'm  now  travelling  in,  lad, 
has  nae  sides ;  and  if  power  were  given  me,  I  would  preach 


538 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


purity  of  life  mair,  and  purity  of  doctrine  less  than  I  did.' 
The  principle  of  Wesley's  life,  for  the  maintenance  of 
which  he  '  is  honoured  among  kings  and  heroes,'  was  the 
'elevation  of  the  whole  Christian  world  in  the  great  prin- 
ciples of  Christian  holiness  and  morality.'  '  Let  us  keep 
to  this,'  urges  Stanley, 

'  leaving  a  thousand  disputable  points  to  those  that  have 
no  better  business  than  to  toss  the  ball  of  controversy  to 
and  fro ;  let  us  bear  a  faithful  testimony  in  our  several 
stations  against  all  ungodliness  and  unrighteousness,  and 
with  all  our  might  recommend  that  inward  and  outward 
holiness,  "without  which  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord."  ' 

'  It  is,'  he  says, 

'in  the  indefinite  growth  of  the  spiritual  man,  as  compared 
with  the  stationary  character  of  the  earthly,  natural  man, 
that  we  gain  at  once  a  new  insight  into  the  spiritual  forces 
of  which  we  are  now  composed,  and  a  new  hope  for  our 
future.  And  if  we  ask,  What  is  this  spiritual  part we 
must  reply.  It  is  the  affections  ;  it  is  the  generosity  which 
embraces  the  needs  of  others  besides  ourselves  ;  it  is  the 
conscience,  which  is  the  ruling  faculty  within  us  ;  it  is  the 
faith  which  moves  mountains  ;  it  is  the  hope  which  looks 
beyond  the  grave ;  it  is,  above  all,  the  love,  the  charity 
which  never  fails  —  which  is  at  once  the  homeliest  and  the 
loftiest  of  the  virtues  of  humanity  and  of  the  attributes  of 
Divinity.' 

The  stress  that  Stanley  laid  on  the  simplest  elements  of 
Christianity,  in  which  all  Christian  communions  agree,  the 
emphasis  that  he  gave  to  those  moral  truths  which  appeal  to 
the  sympathies  of  unbelievers  as  well  as  of  Christians,  made 
him  tolerant,  even  to  excess,  of  diversities  of  theological 
opinion.  With  any  man  who,  like  the  Baptist,  Havelock, 
was  'trusting  in  God  and  doing  his  duty,'  he  found  'grounds 
of  communion  which  neither  differences  of  rites  nor  differ- 
ences of  seas  and  continents  could  ever  efface.'  He  re- 
cognised that,  'of  all  the  many-coloured  shades,  of  all  the 


CHAP.  XXVII       '  ADDRESSES  AND  SERMONS ' 


539 


numberless  diversities,  whether  of  EngUsh  or  universal 
Christendom,  none  can  be  regarded  as  useless  or  worthless.' 
He  warmly  acknowledged  the  debt  which  his  own  church 
owed  to  other  ecclesiastical  organisations  for  doing  the  work 
that  it  had  not  done,  and  perhaps  could  not  do.  '  Let  each 
religious  communion,'  he  says, 

'endeavour,  not  to  supersede,  but  to  supplement  the  other. 
Be  it  the  effort  of  every  Church  and  every  communion  not 
to  spend  the  precious  time  in  needless  recrimination  or 
proselytism.' 

His  personal  attitude  towards  religious  organisations 
outside  his  own  taught  the  possibility  of  harmonious 
relations  between  Churches  of  different  professions.  Dis- 
putes and  jealousies  strangled  the  spiritual  growth;  the 
genial  atmosphere  of  charity  best  nourished  the  plant  into 
life.  *  It  is  astonishing,'  he  reflects,  'how  vast  a  loss  we 
sustain  in  our  spiritual  life  by  thinking  only  how  we  can 
destroy,  attack,  and  assail,  instead  of  thinking  how  we  can 
build  up,  define,  or  edify.'  He  looked  himself,  as  he  urged 
others  to  look,  'not  for  something  to  attack,  but  for  some- 
thing to  admire  ;  not  for  something  to  pull  down,  but  for 
something  to  build  up.'  Each  of  the  various  denomina- 
tions whose  representatives  he  addressed  in  America  was 
in  turn  taught,  as  it  were,  from  its  own  poets,  with  a  tact 
which  promoted  kindly  relations  and  with  a  sincerity 
that  rendered  differences  more  tolerable.  The  Baptists 
only  expressed  the  general  feeling  of  all  classes  of  American 
Christians  when,  in  their  address,  they  spoke  of  '  the  uni- 
formly genial  and  loving  treatment  which  it  is  his  work  to 
mete  out  to  men  of  all  Christian  fellowship,  as  well  as  to 
those  of  his  own.' 

It  may  be  that  in  Stanley  the  poetic  instinct  which  sees 
resemblances  was  more  developed  than  the  philosophic 
mind  which  detects  differences.    But  it  must  be  remem- 


S40 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1878 


bered  that,  while  he  scrupulously  respected  the  opinions 
of  others,  he  sturdily  maintained  his  own.  His  goodwill 
towards  Nonconformists  of  all  denominations  was  not  more 
strongly  marked  than  his  enthusiastic  loyalty  towards  his 
own  Church  of  England.  Anxious,  as  he  was,  to  mitigate 
their  inherited  sense  of  injustice,  he  was  not  prepared  to 
sacrifice  any  portion  of  his  heritage  of  national  life  to  their 
desire  for  equality.  In  the  formularies  of  the  Church, 
reasonably  interpreted,  he  found  a  closer  adherence  to  the 
primitive  Gospel  than  he  could  discover  elsewhere.  At 
home  he  defended  that  Church  against  clerical  intolerance 
of  civil  control,  against  the  jealousy  of  Nonconformity, 
against  the  rationalistic  unbelief  which  resented  the  State's 
profession  of  Christianity.  In  America  he  loses  no  oppor- 
tunity of  enlarging  upon  its  virtues  ;  he  recognises  the 
paramount  claim  which,  through  its  parent,  the  American 
Episcopal  Church  possessed  upon  his  sympathies  ;  he  hails 
with  delight  any  common  features  which  he  discovers  in 
the  characters  of  the  two  kindred  bodies. 

Stanley  loved  his  Church  for  'the  glow  of  historical  and 
national  life  '  with  which,  like  Westminster  Abbey,  it  was 
filled  ;  for  the  '  large  and  comprehensive  associations  '  which 
the  institution  and  its  typical  building  fostered  ;  for  the 
'  union  of  secular  and  religious  influences '  which  both 
represented;  for  the  'diversity  of  gifts'  which  the  one 
sheltered  and  the  other  commemorated  —  cherishing  '  the 
ecclesiastical,  royalist,  priest-like  phase  of  the  Church ' 
seen  in  George  Herbert  side  by  side  with  'the  Puritan, 
austere,  lay  phase '  embodied  in  William  Cowper.*'^ 
Through  its  broad  and  open  system  was  admitted  the 
larger  air  of  national  life,  which  to  him  was  more  whole- 

The  stained-glass  window  placed  in  the  Baptistery  of  Westminster 
Abbey  to  the  memory  of  these  two  Christian  poets  was  the  gift  of  Stanley's 
host  at  Philadelphia,  Mr.  G.  W.  Childs. 


CHAP.  XXVII       'ADDRESSES  AND  SERMONS' 


some  than  the  close  atmosphere  of  more  narrow  and  ex- 
clusively ecclesiastical  organisations.  He  loved  his  Church 
because,  with  all  its  shortcomings,  it  was  '  bound  up  with 
the  very  vitals  of  the  English  Commonwealth,  with  the 
very  fibre  of  English  history,  with  the  best  issues  of  the 
English  Reformation,  and  in  its  majestic  forms,  in  its 
sober  and  refined  character,  still  furnished  a  model  even 
for  those  who  have  parted  from  it.' 

He  valued  his  Church  for  that  diversity  in  unity,  with- 
out which  there  would  be  '  none  of  the  variety  of  Nature, 
none  of  the  culture  of  civilisation,  none  of  the  richness  and 
fulness  of  Christianity.'  In  its  diversity  he  saw  the  pledge 
that,  'by  argument,  by  debate,  by  the  intercourse  of  differ- 
ent souls,  truth  would  be  sifted,  and  light  struck  out,  and 
faith  tried,  and  charity  perfected ' ;  in  the  comprehensive- 
ness and  the  toleration  which  were  necessary  to  maintain 
its  unity  he  found  the  best  guarantee  against  the  spirit  of 
party  and  sectarianism,  and  therefore  the  strongest  security 
of  freedom  of  thought  and  inquiry. 

'Truth,  not  for  the  sake  of  any  ulterior  object,  however 
high  and  holy,  but  truth  for  its  own  sake,'  was  the  aim 
which  he  urged,  not  only  upon  the  American  scholar,  but 
upon  every  student  of  theology.    '  In  using,'  he  says, 

'  to  the  utmost  the  resources  of  science,  in  watching  for 
light  from  every  quarter,  in  sifting  and  searching  all  that 
comes  before  us  to  the  very  bottom,  we  are  fulfilling  the 
very  will  of  the  Redeemer.  Whatever  is  good  science  is 
good  theology  ;  whatever  is  high  morality  and  pure  civili- 
sation is  high  and  pure  religion.' 

And  in  no  other  communion,  as  he  thought,  could  men 
pursue  the  sacred  duty  of  free  inquiry  so  faithfully  as  in 
his  own  Established  Church.  Under  the  shelter  of  the 
law  men  were,  in  his  opinion,  best  fortified  in  the  determi- 
nation *  to  do  and  say  what  is  best  for  their  own  consciences 
and  the  consciences  of  others.' 


542  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1879 

'  By  the  supremacy  of  laws  have  the  Church  and  State  of 
England  hitherto  been  guarded  and  guided  to  temperate 
freedom,  and  wholesome  doctrine,  and  solid  unity.  And 
oh  !  by  the  supremacy  of  law  may  we  all  continue  to  be 
ruled,  by  law  the  passions  of  individuals  restrained,  and 
the  liberty  of  speech  and  thought  secured,  and  the  peace 
and  order  of  the  whole  community  maintained  ! ' 

Possessed  of  the  '  quiet  strength '  of  their  Church,  they 
were  comparatively  freed  from  '  the  bewildering,  blinding, 
entangling  influence '  of  the  sectarian  spirit ;  they  were 
less  exposed  to  the  temptation  of  treating  '  sacred  and 
important  questions  as  party  flags,  to  be  hoisted  up  or 
pulled  down  according  as  it  suits  the  ebb  and  flow  of  public 
opinion ' ;  trained  in  a  broad,  comprehensive  Church,  they 
were  less  likely  than  those  who  were  nurtured  in  narrower 
and  more  exclusive  communions  to  present  that  type  of 
religion  which  comes  into  fatal  collision  with  the  advance 
of  modern  knowledge. 

Stanley  came  back  from  America  with  what  seemed  to 
be  a  fresh  lease  of  life.  For  the  first  few  months  after  his 
return  he  plunged  with  renewed  vigour  into  all  the  varied 
occupations  of  his  busy  life.  His  'Addresses  and  Sermons 
in  America'  was  published  early  in  1879.  soon  as  the 
book  was  completed  he  began,  with  the  assistance  of  his 
sister  Mary,  to  prepare  his  Memoirs  of  his  father  and 
mother.  The  volume  appeared  almost  simultaneously  with 
the  Archbishop's  Memoir  of  Catherine  and  Crauford  Tait. 
In  sending  his  own  volume  to  the  Queen  he  notices  the 
coincidence  : 

'  I  am  very  much  pleased  to  find  that  Your  Majesty  ap- 
proves of  the  Archbishop's  Memoir  of  his  wife  and  son. 
When  I  first  heard  of  the  proposal  I,  in  common  with 
many  of  his  friends,  was  very  much  opposed  to  it.  I 
thought  that,  excellent  as  she  was,  she  hardly  deserved  so 
public  a  record.  But  since  I  read  the  book  my  misgivings 
have  quite  disappeared.    The  double  tragedy  of  the  death 


CHAP.  XXVII   ^EDWARD  AND  CATHERINE  STANLEY'  543 


of  the  five  children,  and  the  death  of  the  mother  and  son  in 
the  same  year,  in  a  home  which  was  itself  so  remarkable, 
almost  elevates  the  subject  to  the  dignity  of  history ;  and 
the  Archbishop's  narrative  of  her  life  is  so  well  done,  and 
her  account  of  the  children  so  affecting,  that  it  cannot  but 
do  good.  I  venture  to  send  to  Your  Majesty  a  book  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind,  yet  very  different.  I  had  long 
wished  to  leave  on  record  some  of  the  sayings  and  writings 
of  my  dear  mother,  and  I  took  the  opportunity  of  a  new 
edition  of  my  Father's  Memoir,  published  long  ago,  and  now 
almost  forgotten,  to  append  them  to  it.  It  is  the  very  op- 
posite to  the  Archbishop's  book,  for  there  is  in  it  hardly 
anything  personal.  I  had  not  the  nerve,  even  if  I  had 
wished  it,  to  go  into  details,  and  the  same  feeling  still 
further  withheld  me  from  adding  anything  of  my  dear 
Augusta,  except  what  I  have  written  on  the  last  page.  It 
will  not  attract  much  attention,  but  a  few  here  and  there 
will  be  glad  to  turn  from  the  violence  and  excitement  of 
these  times  to  so  much  quiet  good  sense  and  wisdom  as 
my  mother's  observations  contain.' 

But  the  revival  of  health  and  spirits  proved  to  be  only 
short-lived.  There  was  much  in  the  events  of  1879  to  re- 
call the  depression  which  he  had  momentarily  shaken  off. 
In  the  summer  an  intimate  friend  of  his  later  life,  the  Rev. 
Henry  Montgomery  (now  Bishop  of  Tasmania),  who  had 
from  1877  to  1879  acted  as  his  secretary,  accepted  a 
suburban  living.  '  I  am  staggering,'  he  writes  to  Mrs. 
Drummond  in  July  1879,  'under  the  dreadful  blow  of 
Montgomery  feeling  himself  constrained  to  accept  the  living 
of  Kennington.  I  hardly  knew  before  how  indispensable  he 
was  to  me.'    'I  went  to  him,'  writes  Bishop  Montgomery, 

'  on  Sunday  morning,  July  6th,  to  hear  Lord  Lawrence's 
funeral  sermon  read  over  to  me,  and  to  suggest  alterations. 
After  we  had  read  it,  he  said,  "I  feel  like  Abraham."  I 
said,  "  Why  }  "  He  looked  up  at  me,  and  took  my  hand,  and 
burst  into  tears,  saying,  "  My  only  son  !  my  dearly  beloved 
son  !  "  and  could  not  go  on.' 

Nor  did  this  loss  come  alone.    He  was  anxious  and 


544 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


'  upset  by  the  hurly-burly  of  the  Prince  Imperial's  monu- 
ment.' He  grew  depressed  and  wearied.  '  I  feel,'  he  says, 
'  as  I  felt  before  starting  for  America.  All  my  forces  and 
powers  are  shattered  and  withered.'  Watchful  friends,  to 
whom  he  talked  of  the  burden  of  life,  noted  the  change 
with  anxiety,  and  it  was  with  mingled  hope  and  fear  that 
they  looked  forward  to  the  effect  of  his  annual  holiday.  In 
August  he  left  London,  to  pay  a  visit  to  Dr.  Vaughan  at 
Llandaff.  'This  place,'  he  says,  'is  Paradise.'  Thence  he 
travelled  northwards  to  Scotland.  His  stay  at  Megginch 
with  the  Drummonds  was,  '  as  ever,  perfect  rest  and  repose.' 
But  as  soon  as  he  left  '  a  house  which  is,  I  feel,  truly  my 
home,'  his  depression  returned.  It  was  with  a  reluctance 
very  different  from  the  eager  anticipation  of  former  years 
that  he  prepared  to  join  his  sister  Mary  in  Switzerland,  and 
with  her  to  make  an  expedition  to  Italy.  Before  leaving 
England,  however,  he  paid  a  visit  to  '  the  Old  Man  of  the 
East'  —  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe.  'His  memory,  his 
sight,  his  intelligence,'  he  tells  the  Queen,  'are  quite 
unimpaired.'  It  was  almost  the  last  occasion  on  which 
he  saw  the  veteran  diplomatist.  In  August  1880  he 
writes  to  the  Queen  of  his  old  friend's  death.  '  He  was,' 
he  says, 

'  a  magnificent  example  to  Englishmen.  What  he  did  for 
the  Turkish  Empire  can  never  be  told.  Everyone  that 
had  a  wrong  to  redress  or  a  grievance  to  be  set  right  went 
at  once  to  him.  He  felt  that  he  had  the  Sultan  in  his  grasp, 
and  as  the  Turks  knew  that  he  had  very  friendly  disposi- 
tions towards  them,  they  could  entirely  trust  him  in  listening 
to  any  reform  that  he  might  propose.  He  was  of  such 
incorruptible  integrity  that  the  honour  of  England  was 
always  safe  in  his  hands.  I  had  always  assumed  that  there 
would  have  been  a  general  wish  that  he  should  have  been 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  close  to  his  two  cousins, 
George  Canning  and  Lord  Canning.  His  great  age,  his 
splendid  services  to  humanity,  his  high  character,  all  pointed 


CHAP.  XXVII 


FOREIGN  TOUR 


545 


that  way.  But  there  was  no  single  indication  of  such  a  wish, 
either  in  the  pubUc  Press  or  from  the  Government  ...  so 
I  did  not  offer.  The  consequence  was  that  he  was  buried 
quite  privately  at  Frant,  in  a  place  with  which  he  had  no 
connection,  and  where  he  will  soon  be  forgotten  when  the 
family  cease  to  live  there.' 

Fresh  from  his  visit  to  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  he 
started  on  his  foreign  tour,  accompanied  by  Dr.  Gerald 
Harper,  who  had  been  his  companion  in  America.  '  Har- 
per,' he  tells  Mrs.  Drummond,  'is  as  good  as  gold.  I  had 
the  great  pleasure  of  driving  him  through  Paris  for  the  first 
time.'  '  He  is  as  good  as  ever,'  he  writes  to  her  a  few  days 
later,  'and  his  enjoyment  repays  me.'  In  the  same  letter, 
written  from  Milan,  he  alludes  to  his  meeting  with  his  sis- 
ter, and  his  journey  from  Lucerne  on  his  way  to  Venice  : 

'This  is  a  journey,  indeed,  over  the  ashes  of  the  past. 
It  was  the  first  I  ever  took  with  Catherine,  when  all  was 
new.  Then,  again,  with  my  dear  mother ;  then  once  and 
again  with  my  dear  Augusta  ;  and  now  I  feel  that  this  is 
for  the  last  time,  and  that  I  shall  in  all  probability  never 
again  set  eyes  on  these  first  scenes  of  my  travels.  The 
one  object  that  always  seems  to  me  of  unfailing  interest  is 
Leonardo  da  Vinci's  picture  of  the  Last  Supper.  The 
agitation  of  the  several  groups  who  have  heard  the  an- 
nouncement that  one  of  them  shall  betray  their  Master  is 
quite  Shakespearean.  Those  on  the  right  are  all  bent  in 
one  direction,  each  reaching  over  the  other  to  get  from 
Peter  and  from  John  the  dreadful  secret.  Judas  is  amongst 
them,  in  the  shade,  with  his  keen,  sharp  visage  fixed  on  the 
Saviour's  eyes,  to  detect  whether  He  will  disclose  it. 

'  On  the  left  it  is  quite  a  different  feeling.  Each  has  his 
own  emotion.  Thomas,  with  uplifted  finger,  arguing,  "  You 
must  be  mistaken  "  ;  James,  with  his  open  mouth,  as  if 
spitting  out  the  thought  with  disgust ;  Philip,  full  of  simple 
devotion  whatever  happens  ;  Matthew,  as  the  historian, 
trying  to  relate  as  best  he  can  to  Thaddeus  and  Simon, 
who  listen  to  him,  as  their  only  chance  of  knowing,  what 
passes  at  the  other  end  of  the  table. 

'  In  the  midst  is  the  perfectly  calm,  unmoved  figure  of 
the  Master.  It  is  brought  out  by  St.  John  having  with- 
VOL.  II  NN 


546 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


drawn  himself  to  one  side,  as  if  to  let  us  see  Him,  and 
by  the  bright  light  of  the  window  of  the  chamber  behind, 
through  which  we  look  far  away  into  the  blue  hills  of 
Judeea.' 

Refreshed  by  the  rest  and  change,  he  had  hardly  returned 
to  England  when  he  was  already  planning  the  new  book, 
which  afterwards  appeared  as  '  Christian  Institutions.' 
'What,'  he  asks  Pearson  in  November  1879, 

*  say  you  to  this  for  a  title  to  my  volume  of  essays  — 
"  Christian  Antiquities  ?  " 

'  The  volume  would  include  three  essays  on  the  Eucharist, 
one  on  Baptism,  one  on  the  Baptismal  Formula  (the  Trinity), 
one  on  Absolution,  one  on  the  Catacombs,  one  on  the  Pope, 
one  on  the  Clergy.' 

A  few  days  later  he  gives  Pearson  a  list  of  his  engage- 
ments in  the  last  week  of  the  month  :  '  A  sermon  at  Leices- 
ter, a  lecture  at  Nottingham,  a  sermon  and  a  lecture  at 
Peterborough,  thus  almost  rivalling  the  portentous  Meteor 
in  Midlothian.'  But  on  November  24th  the  alarming,  and, 
as  it  proved,  fatal  illness  of  his  sister  Mary  cancelled  all  his 
engagements.  Writing  to  Mrs.  Drummond  on  the  26th  of 
November  of  his  grave  anxiety,  he  says  : 

'  Amongst  all  my  sorrows,  this  is  the  only  one  where  I 
have  experienced  the  distraction  of  not  knowing  from  hour 
to  hour  what  the  issue  may  be.  My  father  was  in  a  hope- 
less condition  before  I  heard  that  he  was  seriously  ill.  My 
mother  was  gone  before  I  knew  of  her  death.  My  dear 
Augusta's  illness  was  a  division  of  two  periods  of  long- 
continued  hope  and  long-continued  despair.  I  have  always 
felt  that  this  was  the  next  great  calamity  in  store  for  me, 
but  it  is  not  the  less  appalling  because  of  its  possibility.' 

On  the  same  day  on  which  the  letter  was  written  his 
sister  died.  The  shock  was  very  severe.  Till  he  married, 
Mary  Stanley  had  been  his  constant  companion.  To  'my 
dear  Mai '  the  home  letters  were  addressed  which  contain 
the  almost  daily  chronicle  of  his  life  at  Rugby  and  at 


CHAP.  XXVII 


DEATH  OF  MARY  STANLEY 


547 


Oxford.  Even  her  change  of  religion,  though  it  necessarily 
interposed  some  barriers  to  the  freedom  of  their  inter- 
course, had  made  no  change  in  the  deep  affection  of  the 
brother  and  sister.    '  I  knew,'  he  writes, 

'  that  this  would  be  the  next  great  shock.  How,  at  such  a 
separation,  all  "the  things  which  are  temporal"  —  all  the 
frets  and  fumes  and  fears  —  vanish  away,  and  "the  things 
which  are  eternal  "  —  her  surpassing  love,  her  strong,  almost 
excessive  passion  for  justice,  her  widespread  affection  and 
sympathy,  envelop  the  whole  horizon.' 

According  to  her  own  desire,  she  was  buried  in  Alderley 
Churchyard,  in  a  spot  which  she  had  herself  chosen,  under 
the  mingled  shade  of  an  old  yew-tree  and  its  mass  of  em-- 
bracing  ivy.  The  funeral  was  solemnised  by  Stanley,  Dr. 
Vaughan,  and  the  Rev.  E.  Bell,  the  Rector  of  Alderley. 
'  It  was,'  he  says,  '  like  a  dream  —  the  yew-tree,  the  little 
white  cross,  the  rough  Cheshire  accent,  quite  unchanged.' 
On  the  reverse  side  of  the  white  marble  cross  already 
erected  over  the  grave  of  her  mother  were  engraved  her 
name,  the  date,  and  the  text  which  her  mother  had  long 
before  selected  to  express  her  indefatigable  perseverance : 
'  Never  weary  in  well-doing.' 

'  The  fourth  great  calamity  of  my  life  is  passed,'  he 
writes  to  Mrs.  Drummond.  *I  feel  that  the  last  stage  is 
now  to  be  filled  with  those  works  which  those  who  are  gone 
would  most  have  desired  that  their  absence  should  com- 
memorate.' To  the  second  edition  of  his  '  Memoirs  of 
Edward  and  Catherine  Stanley'  he  added  a  short  bio- 
graphical notice  of  his  sister.  It  ends  with  the  following 
lines : 

The  weary  heart  has  ceased  to  beat ; 

The  journey  of  those  wayworn  feet 

Has  led  her  to  the  home  of  Love, 

Her  home  below,  her  home  above ; 

She  rests  where  once  her  childhood  strayed, 

N  N  2 


I 


548  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1879 


By  lawn,  and  brook,  and  laurel  shade. 
Her  gaze  undimmed  at  last  shall  view 
The  Just,  the  Holy,  and  the  True. 

Dear  voice  of  early,  happy  years. 
Blending  with  thousand  smiles  and  tears ; 
Strong  will,  that  in  its  fragile  frame 
Through  dark  and  light  pursued  its  aim ; 
Heart  that  with  sympathetic  glow 
Could  cheer  the  lonely  sufferer's  woe. 
Or  by  some  radiant  art  illume 
A  careworn  home,  a  nation's  gloom. 

O  solemn  Yew  !  whose  deathless  shade 
A  holy  resting-place  has  made  — 
O  Ivy  !  whose  encircling  grasp 
Has  loved  the  parent-tree  to  clasp  — 
The  sheltering  stem,  the  enfolding  wreath. 
Are  types  of  those  that  sleep  beneath. 
The  Mother's  calm,  unchanging  grace, 
The  Daughter's  long  and  close  embrace. 

Rest  gently  in  this  spot  retired, 
The  one  by  wisdom's  self  inspired, 
The  other  by  untiring  zeal. 
Both  firm  as  rock  through  woe  and  weal. 
Loved  ones  there  are  in  loftier  shrines, 
Whose  life  with  wider  glory  shines  ; 
They  too  would  hail  this  memory  dear 
Of  mind  serene  and  soul  sincere. 


CHAP.  XXVIII    DESPONDENCY  AND  DEPRESSION  549 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

1 880-81 

DESPONDENCY  AND  DEPRESSION  — ANXIETIES  IN  1880— TOUR 
IN  FRANCE,  1880  — 'CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS,'  MARCH  1881 
—ITS  COLD  RECEPTION  — HIS  INTEREST  IN  PUBLIC  AFFAIRS 

—  HIS  SERMONS  ON  THE  BEATITUDES  —  HIS  LAST  ILLNESS 

—  HIS  DEATH  AND  BURIAL 

In  the  spring  of  1880  anxieties  and  troubles  occurred 
which  weighed  heavily  on  Stanley's  mind,  and  caused  a  con- 
spicuous failure  in  health.  His  frail  figure  shrank,  his  hair 
grew  more  white  and  silvery,  his  voice  became  enfeebled. 
These  outward  symptoms  of  physical  decay  were  not  the 
only  signs  that  the  lamp  of  life  was  burning  low,  though 
occasional  flashes  of  its  former  brightness  concealed  its 
dimness.  As  time  advanced  his  old  interests  seemed  to  lose 
their  power.  In  the  multiplicity  of  new  scenes  and  new 
faces  which  he  encountered  in  a  round  of  visits  he  had  once 
delighted.  Now  he  had  '  come  to  the  conclusion  that  visits 
to  country-houses,  except  as  a  matter  of  duty,  do  not  answer. 
I  am  out  of  place,  and  there  is  a  constant  sense  of  the 
never  to  be  supplied,  never  to  be  forgotten  loneliness,  which 
is  greater  than  on  any  other  occasion.'  '  I  am  too  old  for 
travelling,'  writes  the  once  enthusiastic  traveller  and  sight- 
seer in  September  1880.  Without  effort,  by  the  sheer  force 
of  his  varied  interests,  tastes,  and  sympathies,  he  had  for 
years  identified  himself  with  all  that  was  best  in  the  move- 
ments of  the  times.  In  1879  he  had  rejoiced  to  meet  the 
Italian  statesman,  Minghetti ;  'it  adds,'  he  says,  'to  my 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1880 


failing  hold  on  the  outside  world.'  Now  he  seemed  to  feel 
that  '  the  outside  world  '  eluded  his  grasp.  '  My  visit  to 
Oxford,'  he  says  in  October  1880,  'has  filled  me  with  sad 
thoughts.  I  feel  how  completely  I  belong  to  another  period 
of  existence.'  He  who  had  once  said  '  My  heart  leaps  when 
I  behold  an  undergraduate,'  had  now  lost  his  readiness  of 
sympathy  with  the  young.  Returning  from  the  triennial 
dinner  of  Old  Rugbeians  towards  the  end  of  June  1881,  he 
said,  '  I  shall  never  go  again.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  shall 
not  live,  but  I  feel  that  I  am  losing  interest  in  these  special 
and  youthful  gatherings.'  Sympathy  was  the  atmosphere  in 
which  he  lived,  and  when  he  failed  to  gain  it  from  the  public, 
he  was  depressed  by  a  sense  of  discouragement.  '  Every- 
thing I  do,'  he  said  in  the  closing  months  of  his  life,  'is 
sure  to  fail.  The  public  have  ceased  to  read  or  listen  to 
anything  that  I  can  tell  them.'  After  his  sister  Mary's 
death  his  attitude  towards  life  changed.  He  seemed  to  be 
waiting  for  his  own  summons  with  the  feeling  that  it  could 
not  be  long  delayed.  He  looked  at  places  as  if  he  saw 
them  for  the  last  time.  In  discussing  plans  for  the  future, 
he  always  added,  'if  I  am  alive.' 

On  public  occasions,  or  when  relieved  from  the  smaller 
duties  and  anxieties  of  Westminster,  his  spirits  rose,  and 
neither  his  energy  nor  his  powers  of  enjoyment  seemed 
to  be  impaired.  His  broken  engagements  to  preach  and 
lecture  at  Leicester,  Nottingham,  and  Peterborough  were 
fulfilled  in  February  1880,  and  his  intervals  of  leisure  from' 
sermons  and  addresses  were  spent  in  exploring  the  scene  of 
the  imprisonment  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  at  Fotheringhay, 
and  the  home  of  Byron  at  Newstead.  In  April  of  the  same 
year  he  made,  with  his  sister,  Mrs.  Vaughan,  Sir  John  Has- 
sard,  and  Dr.  Gerald  Harper,  a  tour  through  the  Channel 
Islands.  The  humours  of  the  voyage  and  the  passengers, 
the  quaint  ceremonies  which  accompany  the  inauguration 


CHAP.  XXVIII         THE  CHANNEL  ISLANDS 


551 


of  a  new  Bailiff,  the  points  of  difference  between  the  dif- 
ferent islands,  their  literary  associations  with  Clarendon  or 
with  Victor  Hugo,  are  observed  with  his  old  quickness,  and 
described  with  little  less  than  the  vivacity  of  former  years. 
With  the  house  of  Victor  Hugo  he  was  at  once  interested 
and  amused.    '  It  is,'  he  says, 

'a  marvel  in  itself  —  a  bedroom  sumptuously  fitted  up  for 
Garibaldi,  who  never  came ;  a  dining-room,  adorned  with 
pictures  representing  "the  end  of  the  Aristocrat,"  "the 
end  of  the  Priest,"  "the  end  of  the  soldier" — each  a  mur- 
der—  and  furnished  with  an  armchair,  across  which  a  chain 
is  drawn  to  prevent  anyone  sitting  upon  it,  because  it  is 
still  occupied  by  the  spirit  of  his  grandfather.' 

When,  at  the  end  of  April,  he  returned  to  London,  he 
relapsed  into  his  former  weariness  and  depression.  Public 
and  private  troubles  seemed  to  gather  thickly  round  him. 
The  result  of  the  Parliamentary  elections  of  1880  surprised 
and  distressed  him,  and  he  regarded  the  political  future 
with  grave  forebodings.  Questions  affecting  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  Abbey  —  '  my  glory,'  as  he  says  —  '  the  place 
for  which  I  have  given  my  life's  blood,'  weighed  heavily 
upon  his  mind.  Difficulties  connected  with  the  manage- 
ment of  Westminster  Hospital,  which  he  feared  might 
result  in  '  the  destruction  of  all  my  Augusta's  work,'  filled 
him  with  anxiety.  The  agitation  against  the  proposed 
monument  to  the  Prince  Imperial  was  reaching  its  height, 
and  he  for  the  first  time  encountered  the  storm  of  popular 
opposition. 

Harassed  and  anxious,  he  passed  'an  agitated  and 
agitating  summer.'  It  was  not  till  August  that  he  could 
write  from  the  shelter  of  his  sister's  home  at  Llandaff,  '  at 
last  I  have  a  moment  of  repose.'  The  close  of  the  month 
found  him  in  Scotland,  enjoying  his  annual  stay  at  Megg- 
inch  Castle.    He  left  with  '  a  heavy  heart '  for  his  last 


552 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1880 


tour  abroad,  spending  on  his  journey  southwards  three 
days  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  preaching  at  Douglas,  and  finding 
in  the  Tynwald  '  an  ancient  mound,  like  that  at  Alderley.' 

His  companions  on  his  foreign  journey  were  the  Rev. 
Henry  Montgomery,  and  Dr.  Gerald  Harper  who  joined 
him  at  San  Sebastian.  In  Paris  his  spirits  revived  as  he 
poured  out  to  a  sympathetic  companion  his  recollections  of 
the  striking  events  which  he  had  himself  witnessed  in  the 
City  of  Revolutions.  Waving  his  umbrella  in  the  Champs 
Elysees,  he  declaimed  the  speech  of  Lamartine  which 
saved  the  Tricolour :  '  The  red  flag  has  made  the  circle  of 
the  Champs  de  Mars,  but  the  Tricolour  has  carried  the 
glory  of  France  round  the  world.'  During  his  stay  he 
attended  the  service  at  the  chapel  of  Pere  Hyacinthe. 
'  The  Dean,  with  his  goloshes  and  umbrella,  sate  inside  the 
Communion  rails,'  writes  Bishop  Montgomery,  'and  I  also, 
with  umbrella  and  hat ;  while  alongside  of  us  was  a  priest 
in  a  gorgeous  vestment,  and  the  Pere  himself  in  a  yellow 
stole  or  chasuble.'  In  the  preceding  year  Stanley  had 
been  at  P^re  Hyacinthe's  chapel  with  Mr.  Gladstone.  Ac- 
cordingly, 'we  were  mistaken,'  says  the  Dean  to  Mrs. 
Drummond,  'for  the  Dean  of  Westminster  and  his  in- 
separable companion,  Mr.  Gladstone.' 

By  Chartres,  Orleans,  and  Blois  he  travelled  to  Biarritz. 
Most  of  the  journey  was  familiar  to  Stanley,  but  in  the  joy 
of  giving  joy  to  another  he  regained  his  almost  boyish 
spirits.  At  Biarritz  he  was  fired  with  ambition  to  bathe. 
In  vain  did  his  companion  raise  objections.  From  his  shed 
on  the  beach  he  emerged  on  to  the  crowded  shore,  as 
Bishop  Montgomery  relates  the  incident, 

'  clad  in  a  knickerbocker  suit,  with  the  addition  of  a  huge 
sugarloaf  hat,  which  completely  concealed  his  head.  Then 
he  advanced  at  a  hand-gallop  across  the  sands  at  a  dashing 
pace.    He  met  a  wave  about  two  feet  high  and  fell  on  his 


CHAP.  XXVIII 


TOUR  m  FRANCE 


553 


nose,  vanishing,  knickerbockers  and  all,  for  one  brief 
moment.  Then  he  turned,  and,  beaming  like  Pickwick, 
made  for  his  shed.  He  was  hugely  delighted  with  his 
achievement,  and  afterwards,  as  he  sate  drinking  his 
chocolate  in  a  cafe,  he  said  with  glee,  "  I  feel  like  a 
schoolboy  who  has  done  something  wrong,  to  whom  no 
harm  has  happened.'" 

The  proposed  expedition  into  Spain  was,  after  seeing 
Pampeluna,  abandoned,  chiefly  on  sanitary  grounds.  '  The 
two  young  men  were  not  keen  for  it,  and  I,  therefore, 
reluctantly  gave  it  up.'  It  was  decided  instead  to  tread  old 
ground  in  the  Pyrenees,  to  track  the  French  Covenanters 
through  the  caves  and  passes  of  the  Cevennes,  to  be 
with  the  Popes  at  Avignon,  and  with  Petrarch  at  Vaucluse. 
'  I  shall  end  my  travelling,'  wrote  Stanley  to  Mrs.  Drum- 
mond,  'where  I  began  it  —  with  the  Pyrenees.' 

At  the  end  of  October  he  returned  to  what  he  calls  his 
'gloomy  home.'  Yet  there  was  much  to  occupy  his  mind. 
His  hands  were  full  of  work.  Not  only  was  he  preparing 
his  '  Christian  Institutions  '  for  the  press,  but,  at  the  request 
of  Lady  Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  he  was  arranging,  editing, 
and  writing  a  preface  to  the  articles  which  Lord  Stratford 
de  Redcliffe  had  contributed  to  the  *  Nineteenth  Century.' 
In  London  and  elsewhere  he  had  many  engagements  to 
preach  or  speak.  On  the  last  Sunday  of  October  he  was 
in  Oxford.  In  the  first  week  of  November  he  was  at 
Cheltenham,  speaking  at  a  meeting  of  the  Charity  Organi- 
sation Society,  and  on  the  Sunday  preaching  in  All  Saints' 
Church  and  in  the  College  chapel.    '  Cheltenham,'  he  says, 

'  is  a  new  world.  I  much  enjoyed  my  expedition  with  my 
host,  Mr.  Owen,  formerly  a  Master  at  Westminster,  and  his 
wife  —  a  very  charming  person  —  to  Tewkesbury.  We  ex- 
plored the  scene  of  the  great  Lancastrian  battle,  and  in  the 
house  where  the  young  Prince  Edward  was  murdered  by 
"false,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence,"  I  insisted  on  the  carpet 


554 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


being  rolled  back  that  I  might  see  the  bloodstains  on  the 
floor.' 

But  the  year  1880  had,  on  the  whole,  been  full  of  gloom, 
which  he  could  not  shake  off.  His  visit  to  Oxford  impressed 
him,  as  he  told  Mrs.  Drummond,  with  '  a  feeling  of  total 
estrangement  from  the  world  moving  there  —  forgetting 
and  forgotten.'  When  the  anniversary  of  his  engagement 
to  Lady  Augusta  came  round,  it  brought  with  it  the 
thought,  '  What  a  wretched  year  this  would  have  been  to 
her,    I  cannot  but  feel  grateful  that  she  is  no  longer  here.' 

Even  the  publication  of  his  volume  on  the  '  Christian 
Institutions,'  in  March  1881,  failed  to  rouse  him.  Its 
reception  disappointed  him,  and  seemed  to  prove  to  him 
that  he  had  lost  his  hold  upon  the  public.  Yet,  apart  from 
the  pathetic  interest  which  the  book  derives  from  the  time 
of  its  publication,  it  forms  a  masterly,  striking,  and  most 
characteristic  work. 

The  essays  contained  in  the  'Christian  Institutions' 
discuss  Baptism,  the  Eucharist,  Absolution,  Ecclesiastical 
Vestments,  the  Basilica,  the  Clergy,  the  Pope,  the  Litany, 
the  Roman  Catacombs,  the  Creed  of  the  Early  Christians, 
the  Council  and  Creed  of  Constantinople,  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  and  the  Ten  Commandments.  Written  at  long 
intervals  of  time,  and  touching  on  a  variety  of  topics,  they 
yet  possess  a  threefold  unity.  They  are  united  by  the 
bonds  of  the  common  institution  to  which  they  relate,  of 
the  common  purpose  which  pervades  the  whole  series,  of 
the  insight  which  they  collectively  give  into  the  inmost 
mind  and  character  of  their  author.  They  constitute  his 
final  legacy  to  the  world  as  a  Christian  historian  and 
theologian  ;  they  convey  his  chief  message  to  his  genera- 
tion ;  they  summarise  his  final  views  on  the  great  topics 
which  filled  his  thoughts  ;  they  illustrate  the  character- 
istic methods  of  his  historical  inquiries  ;  they  explain  the 


CHAP,  xxviii       '  CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS ' 


555 


secret  of  his  all-embracing  toleration  and  charity ;  they 
strike  the  key  which  harmonises  all  his  religious  hopes  and 
convictions  ;  they  reveal  the  source  of  the  serenity  with 
which  he  regarded  the  turmoil  of  ecclesiastical  strife. 

'  Underneath  the  sentiments  and  usages,'  writes  Stanley 
in  his  preface,  'which  have  accumulated  round  the  forms 
of  Christianity  .  .  .  there  is  a  class  of  principles  —  a  re- 
ligion, as  it  were,  behind  the  religion,  which,  however  dimly 
expressed,  has  given  them  whatever  vitality  they  possess.' 
To  seize  the  eternal  realities  instead  of  their  fleeting 
shadows ;  to  catch  the  notes  of  the  spiritual  undersong, 
without  respect  to  the  words  with  which  it  is  temporarily 
wedded ;  to  trace  the  primal  indefeasible  truths  of  religion 
beneath  the  forms  by  which  they  are  overlaid,  were  the 
objects  which  Stanley  set  before  himself.  In  the  common 
elementary  substance  of  all  variations  in  Christian  faith  he 
found  that  universal  religion  which  makes  one  Church,  not 
only  of  conflicting  parties,  but  of  separate  and  even  rival 
communions. 

In  the  baptismal  formula  of  *  the  Name  of  the  Father, 
of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,'  he  recognised  the 
foundation  on  which  the  whole  fabric  of  Christianity  is 
reared.  Each  revelation,  whether  natural,  historical,  or 
spiritual,  amplifies,  extends,  and  completes  the  idea  of 
God.    Natural  religion  brings  the  assurance  that 

'  there  is  One  above  us  Whose  praise  is  above  any  human 
praise  —  Who  sees  us  as  we  really  are — Who  has  our  wel- 
fare at  heart  in  all  the  various  dispensations  which  befall 
us  — -Whose  wide-embracing  justice  and  long-suffering  and 
endurance  we  may  all  strive  to  obtain.' 

But  this  natural  revelation  of  God  may  grow  vague  and 
abstract.  It  is  the  object  of  the  historical  revelation  — 
'  the  Word,  the  speech  that  comes  to  us  out  of  that  eternal 
silence  which  surrounds  the  unseen  Divinity '  —  to  unite 


556 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


religion  with  morality,  and  to  declare  that,  '  in  the  highest 
sense,  the  image  of  man  was  made  after  the  image  of  God.' 

*  To  believe  in  the  Name  of  Christ,  in  the  Name  of  the  Son, 
is  to  believe  that  God  is,  above  all  other  qualities,  a  Moral 
Being  —  a  Being  not  merely  of  power  and  wisdom,  but  a 
Being  of  tender  compassion,  of  boundless  charity,  of  dis- 
criminating tenderness.  To  believe  in  the  Name  of  Christ 
is  to  believe  that  no  other  approach  to  God  exists  except 
through  those  same  qualities  of  justice,  truth,  and  love 
which  make  up  the  mind  of  Christ.' 

But  the  revelation  is  not  yet  complete.  As  the  natural 
religion,  which  makes  known  the  Father,  may  become 
abstract,  so  the  historical  religion,  which  is  manifested  in 
the  life  of  Christ  in  the  world,  may  become  'perverted, 
distorted,  exhausted,  formalised.'  A  third  revelation  is 
needed,  and  that  is  the  spiritual  religion,  which  breathes 
life  into  forms  and  facts,  which  relies  on  the  substance  and 
not  on  the  letter,  which  gives  strength  and  liberty  to  moral 
and  intellectual  energy.    To  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost  is 

'  to  believe  in  the  Divine  supremacy  of  conscience ;  to 
believe  that  the  spirit  is  above  the  letter ;  to  believe  that 
the  substance  is  above  the  form  ;  to  believe  that  the  mean- 
ing is  more  important  than  the  words  ;  to  believe  that 
truth  is  greater  than  authority,  or  fashion,  or  imagination, 
and  will  at  last  prevail ;  to  believe  that  goodness,  and 
justice,  and  love  are  the  bonds  of  perfectness,  without 
which  whosoever  liveth  is  counted  dead  though  he  live, 
and  which  bind  together  those  who  are  divided  in  all  other 
things  whatsoever.' 

Such  a  confession  of  faith  ignored  all  claims  to  the 
exclusive  possession  of  truth  ;  it  denied  the  vital  necessity 
of  any  one  form  of  organised  system  ;  it  repudiated  the 
principles  on  which  extreme  sacramental  theories  are 
based  ;  it  cut  at  the  root  of  the  whole  fabric  of  a  sacerdotal 
Christianity.    On  it  was  based  his  large  charity  and  wide 


CHAP.  XXVIII       '  CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS' 


557 


toleration  ;  all  who  held  it  were  brethren,  and  the  differences 
that  divided  them  were  differences  of  names,  not  of  things. 
Yet  in  Stanley's  mind  this  confession  of  faith  was  not  in- 
consistent with  the  most  sincere  and  enthusiastic  loyalty 
to  the  Established  Church  of  England.  In  his  opinion, 
at  least,  it  not  merely  satisfied  the  legal  requirements  of 
membership  —  it  expressed  the  only  faith  which  harmonised 
with  the  spirit  of  the  National  Church  and  with  the  spirit 
of  its  Founder.  In  its  doctrine  and  discipline  he  believed 
that  the  mind  of  Christ  was  more  faithfully  presented,  and 
therefore  the  living  realities  of  religion  were  more  safely 
preserved,  than  elsewhere.  But  his  loyalty  was  to  the 
spirit,  and  not  the  form,  of  its  system  ;  to  the  meaning 
and  not  the  symbols,  of  its  rites  ;  to  the  substance,  and  not 
the  letter,  of  its  formularies.  Changes  of  thought  or  of 
language  might,  as  he  thought,  modify  the  outward  expres- 
sion ;  one  age  might  attach  more  importance  to  one  sym- 
bol than  to  another ;  it  was  the  kernel  only,  and  not  the 
shell,  for  which  he  cared.  Neither  did  he  make  an  idol 
of  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged.  No  one  estimated 
more  highly  than  Stanley  the  value  of  a  National  Church 
and  a  National  Clergy;  no  one  —  to  the  day  of  his  death 
—  defended  both  more  enthusiastically.  But  he  saw  that  in 
the  past  neither  had  been  indispensable  to  the  continued 
existence  of  Christianity,  and  he  recognised  that  in  the 
future  both  institutions  might  pass  away.  The  only  en- 
during realities  were  the  primal,  indefeasible  truths  of 
religion  which  they  helped  to  embody,  preserve,  and 
diffuse. 

These  opinions  were  supported  in  the  '  Essays  on 
Christian  Institutions  '  by  the  appeal  to  history.  Through- 
out, his  object  is  to  remove  unfounded  prejudices,  to  dis- 
perse causeless  apprehensions,  to  place  controversies  about 
names  and  things  on  their  proper  level,  to  draw  out  the 


558 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


abiding  moral  significance  of  rites,  ceremonies,  usages,  and 
systems,  and  so  to  force  men  to  turn  from  combats  about 
shadows  to  the  permanent  underlying  realities.  On  these 
objects  are  concentrated  the  multifarious  stores  of  varied 
learning  which  his  patient  labour  of  years  had  accumulated. 
In  his  Essays  he  popularises  the  results  which  modern 
inquiry  had  collected  in  such  works  as  the  '  Dictionary  of 
Christian  Antiquities.'  He  brings  vividly  before  the 
reader  the  scenes,  circumstances,  and  practices  of  primitive 
Christianity,  illustrating  them  with  picturesque  descrip- 
tions of  the  varied  aspects  of  Christian  life  and  worship 
with  which  his  unrivalled  opportunities  of  foreign  travel 
had  rendered  him  familiar.  Everywhere  he  endeavours  to 
detect  likenesses  in  things  different ;  to  trace  distinctions 
between  things  similar ;  to  separate  the  substance  from 
the  form  ;  to  bring  into  striking  juxtapositions  of  contrast 
or  comparison  offices  and  ceremonies  which  seem  most 
closely  connected  or  most  widely  separated. 

Throughout  the  whole  series  there  runs  the  common 
purpose  which  is  kept  steadily  in  view.  It  was  not  the 
mere  love  of  literary  paradox  —  still  less  was  it  the  spirit 
of  wilful  provocation  —  which  induced  him  to  represent  the 
Pope  as  a  Protestant,  or  as  a  museum  of  ecclesiastical 
curiosities,  and  to  discover  in  the  service  in  his  private 
chapel  the  relics  of  the  barbaric  simplicity  of  Christian 
worships  or  to  exhibit  the  Laudian  Anglicans  as  dis- 
obedient to  the  canons  of  the  First  CEcumenical  Council, 
and  the  Puritans  as  sticklers  for  the  observance  of  decrees 
which  they  despised ;  or  to  show  that  in  the  posture  of 
receiving  the  Eucharist,  which  had  provoked  such  bitter 
and  unseemly  strife,  the  Nonconformist  approximated  to 
the  Pope,  and  the  Presbyterian  to  the  Mussulman;  or  to 
argue  that  the  vestments,  which  are  regarded  as  the  most 
characteristic  symbols  of  priestly  functions  are  not  only 


CHAP.  XXVIII      '  CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS'' 


559 


devoid  of  all  symbolical,  mystical,  sacrificial,  or  sacerdotal 
meaning,  but  in  fact  afford  the  most  convincing  proof  that 
no  distinction  existed  in  primitive  times  between  the  clergy 
and  the  laity.  The  object  of  all  these  surprises  and  dis- 
illusions was  to  turn  men's  attention  from  changing  forms 
of  outward  expression  to  the  permanent  reality  of  the 
inward  spirit. 

The  same  purposes  are  pursued  in  dealing  with  the 
variations  through  which  Christian  institutions  have  passed, 
both  in  the  symbols  by  which  they  were  expressed,  and  in 
the  estimate  that  was  formed  of  their  relative  importance. 
Some  ceremonies,  which  were  considered  vital  to  the  ex- 
istence of  the  early  Church,  have  been  abandoned ;  others 
are  now  treated  as  indispensable  which  to  the  early 
Christians  were  unknown  or  indifferent.  In  Baptism,  for 
instance,  adult  baptism  is  practically  superseded  by  infant 
baptism ;  the  ceremony  is  no  longer  performed  by  the 
bishop  only;  the  immersion,  the  anointing,  the  white 
gowns,  the  kiss  of  peace,  the  taste  of  milk  and  honey,  which 
in  the  early  Church  gave  such  dramatic  force  to  the  rite, 
have  been  abandoned.  In  the  administration  of  the  Eucha- 
rist, the  time,  and  the  posture  of  the  recipients,  have  been 
changed ;  the  kiss  of  peace  has  been  omitted  ;  the  Liturgy 
has  been  repeatedly  changed  ;  the  uses  adopted  in  the  Cop- 
tic, Greek,  Roman,  and  Anglican  Churches  vary  almost  in- 
definitely. Yet  the  ordinances  themselves  have  outlived  the 
superstitions  which  have  gathered  round  them,  and  survived 
repeated  and  radical  changes  in  their  ceremonial  observance. 

The  explanation  which  Stanley  offers  of  this  continued 
vitality  will  strike  many  minds  as  partial  and  inadequate ; 
but  few  can  deny  the  force  of  the  argument  that  he  de- 
duces from  the  elasticity  and  variety  of  the  ceremonial. 

The  permanent  elements  which  he  discovers  in  such 
ordinances  as  Baptism  and  the  Eucharist  are  the  human 


560 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


feelings  that  they  embody  and  evoke.  Their  vitality  is 
due  to  their  correspondence  with,  and  representation  of,  the 
highest  and  purest  instincts  of  human  nature.  Passing  over 
in  silence  the  Divine  nature  of  their  institution,  he  lays  his 
whole  stress,  with  winning  earnestness  of  manner  and  great 
force  and  beauty  of  language,  on  their  moral  and  spiritual 
significance.  The  ceremony  of  Baptism  survives  because 
of  the  passage  from  darkness  to  light,  from  uncleanness  to 
purity,  which  it  typifies,  and  because  of  the  natural  reverence 
for  a  tender  conscience,  which  softens  the  most  hardened 
in  the  presence  of  an  innocent,  trusting  infant.  In  the 
Eucharist,  the  permanent  elements,  which  have  withstood 
the  shock  of  centuries  of  change,  are  the  moral  effort  to 
dwell  in  the  love  of  God,  and  the  spiritual  union  and 
harmony  with  the  Divine  Spirit.  In  both  institutions  it  is 
the  moral  and  spiritual  significance  which  is  the  underlying 
substance  and  the  eternal  reality  of  the  institution.  Though 
the  explanation  of  the  facts  may  be  narrow  and  incomplete, 
the  argument  which  is  based  upon  them  is  undoubtedly 
strong.  Disputes  about  external  forms  are  shown  to  be 
combats  about  shadows.  The  outward  expression  of  an 
ordinance  cannot  be  of  vital  importance  if  the  institution 
itself  survives  its  radical  and  repeated  change.  History 
teaches  that  the  substance  has  outlived  the  modifications  in 
practice  or  in  language  which  successive  ages  have  resisted 
as  matters  of  life  or  death  ;  it  also  inspires  the  hope  that, 
whatever  changes  of  the  letter  may  be  in  store  in  future, 
the  spirit  will  still  survive  with  unimpaired  and  inextin- 
guishable vitality. 

The  '  Essays  on  Christian  Institutions '  urged  the  neces- 
sity of  discriminating  between  things  essential  and  things 
secondary,  and  of  distinguishing  the  letter  from  the  spirit ; 
they  showed  the  religious  insignificance  of  many  of  the 
combats  which  have  distracted,  and  still  distract,  the  minds 


CHAP.  XXVIII       'CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS' 


of  religious  men  ;  they  established  the  groundlessness  of 
many  of  the  fears  and  forebodings  by  which  they  are 
agitated.  In  these  respects  there  could  be  no  question 
of  their  utility  and  value.  To  a  large  number  of  persons 
they  bore  a  real  message  of  peace  and  hope.  Many  men, 
whose  lives  had  been  spent  in  the  midst  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical controversies  of  the  past  fifty  years,  had  begun  to 
doubt  the  moral  and  spiritual  value  of  forms  and  institu- 
tions which  were  bandied  about  as  the  battle-cries  of  con- 
tending parties.  To  such  as  these  Stanley  taught  the 
correspondence  of  Christian  systems  and  ordinances  with 
the  most  abiding  spiritual  realities.  To  them  he  unfolded 
the  deep  affinities  which  exist  between  Christian  truth  and 
high  morality,  the  moral  significance  of  Christian  forms 
of  worship,  the  living,  human  quality  of  doctrine,  the 
natural  value  of  the  Church  as  a  means  of  fostering  and 
diffusing  a  lofty  standard  of  pure  living. 

The  historical  and  the  moral  elements  of  his  writing 
combined  to  give  new  life  to  petrified  phrases ;  they 
lightened  the  burden  of  many  consciences ;  they  main- 
tained the  fullest  freedom  of  thought  and  inquiry,  together 
with  the  fullest  reverence  for  all  that  was  most  sacred  in 
religion  ;  and  thus,  to  quote  the  words  of  Archbishop  Tait, 
Stanley  'confirmed  in  the  faith  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
vast  numbers  of  persons  who  would  otherwise  have  wan- 
dered from  it.'  But,  except  on  the  human  side,  the  treat- 
ment of  the  subject  might  appear  to  many  thoughtful 
Christians  partial  and  inadequate.  The  stress  is  too  ex- 
clusively laid  on  the  moral  atmosphere  which  sacred  ordi- 
nances engender.  To  emphasise  the  moral  and  spiritual 
meaning  of  rites  and  ceremonies  which  Christ  has  founded 
is  one  thing  ;  but  to  not  a  few  devout  minds  it  is  necessarily 
a  shock  when  Stanley  appears  to  find  in  this  significance 
the  sole  cause  of  the  vitality  of  Christian  institutions. 
VOL.  II  O  O 


562 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


Stanley's  silence  on  this  side  of  the  subject  is  too  habitual 
to  be  attributed  to  exceptional  causes.  But  in  this  parti- 
cular instance  the  reticence  is  partly  due  to  the  special  pur- 
pose which  he  keeps  steadily  in  view  throughout  the  series 
of  essays.  On  points  of  doctrine  men  of  the  holiest  and 
most  saintly  character  held  conflicting  views,  and  it  was 
his  object  to  take  his  stand  on  ground  where  all  agreed. 
He  was  combating  the  prejudices  which  are  engendered 
by  attachment  or  opposition  to  outward  forms.  He  was 
endeavouring  to  dissipate  the  apprehensions  with  which 
men  viewed  changes  in  the  letter  or  the  words  of  ceremonial 
observances.  He  was  labouring  to  bridge  over  the  gap 
which  to  many  minds  seemed  to  separate  dogmatic  from 
moral  truth.  He  was  fighting  against  the  '  materialism  of 
the  sacristy,'  which,  in  combination  with  the  materialism 
of  the  philosophic  mind,  threatened  to  destroy  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  sacred  ordinances. 

Always  cautious  in  the  use  of  words,  and  fastidious  in 
the  selection  of  the  phrase  which  exactly  expressed  the 
precise  shade  of  meaning,  he  was  deeply  impressed  with 
the  incapacity  of  human  language  to  deal  with  Divine 
mysteries.  He  felt,  now  and  always,  that  to  keep  the 
commandments  of  God  in  word  and  thought  and  deed 
was  to  inherit  eternal  life ;  he  was  convinced  that  the 
weightiest  matters  of  the  law  were  justice,  mercy,  and 
truth,  and  that  'truth  in  action,  truth  in  speech,  truth  in 
manner,  truth  in  heart,  truth  in  thought,'  were  of  more  value 
than  the  '  set  phrases  and  artificial  forms '  of  verbal  ortho- 
doxy. Neither  the  darker  and  sterner  sides  of  human 
nature,  nor  their  afifinities  in  the  truths  or  ordinances  of 
religion,  fell  within  the  range  of  his  spiritual  experience. 
To  him,  pure  habits  came  more  easily  than  to  other  men ; 
the  childlike  innocence  of  his  character  retained  its  fresh- 
ness unsullied,  as  its  cheerful  gaiety  remained  unsoured  by 


CHAP.  XXVIII       'CHRISTIAN  INSTITUTIONS' 


563 


disappointment  ;  a  sunny  atmosphere,  which  he  carried 
with  him  from  his  early  home,  pervaded  his  whole  view  of 
human  life.  Such  a  disposition  brought  happiness  to  him- 
self and  to  others ;  it  was,  in  part,  the  secret  of  the  capti- 
vating charm,  both  of  his  presence  and  his  writings ;  but  it 
also,  in  part,  explains  the  limitations  which  restricted  the 
range  of  his  theological  sympathies. 

The  volume  of  essays  on  Christian  Institutions  was 
the  last  important  work  to  which  he  put  his  hand,  and  he 
could  not  close  his  literary  labours  in  more  fitting  language 
than  in  the  words  which  at  once  conclude  the  volume  and 
embody  the  spirit  of  his  whole  career : 

'Love  one  another  in  spite  of  differences,  in  spite  of 
faults,  in  spite  of  the  excesses  of  one  or  the  defects  of 
another.  Love  one  another,  and  make  the  best  of  one 
another,  as  He  loved  us  who,  for  the  sake  of  saving  what 
was  good  in  the  human  soul,  forgot,  forgave,  put  out  of 
sight  what  was  bad  —  who  saw  and  loved  what  was  good 
even  in  the  publican  Zaccheus,  even  in  the  penitent  Mag- 
dalen, even  in  the  expiring  malefactor,  even  in  the  heretical 
Samaritan,  even  in  the  Pharisee  Nicodemus,  even  in  the 
heathen  soldier,  even  in  the  outcast  Canaanite.  Make  the 
most  of  what  there  is  good  in  institutions,  in  opinions,  in 
communities,  in  individuals.  It  is  very  easy  to  do  the 
reverse  :  to  make  the  worst  of  what  there  is  of  evil,  absurd, 
and  erroneous.  By  so  doing  we  shall  have  no  difficulty  in 
making  estrangements  more  wide,  and  hatreds  and  strifes 
more  abundant,  and  errors  more  extreme.  It  is  very  easy 
to  fix  our  attention  only  on  the  weak  points  of  those  around 
us,  to  magnify  them,  to  irritate  them,  to  aggravate  them  ; 
and,  by  so  doing,  we  can  make  the  burden  of  life  unendur- 
able, and  can  destroy  our  own  and  others'  happiness  and 
usefulness  wherever  we  go.  But  this  was  not  the  new 
love  wherewith  we  are  to  love  one  another.  That  love  is 
universal,  because  in  its  spirit  we  overcome  evil  simply  by 
doing  good.  We  drive  out  error  simply  by  telling  the 
truth.  We  strive  to  look  on  both  sides  of  the  shield  of 
truth.  We  strive  to  speak  the  truth  in  love,  that  is,  with- 
out exaggeration  or  misrepresentation  ;  concealing  nothing, 
compromising  nothing,  but  with  the  effort  to  understand 

002 


564 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


each  other,  to  discover  the  truth  which  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  the  error ;  with  the  determination  cordially  to  love 
whatever  is  lovable,  even  in  those  in  whom  we  cordially 
detest  whatever  is  detestable.  And,  in  proportion  as  we 
endeavour  to  do  this,  there  may  be  a  hope  that  men  will 
see  that  there  are,  after  all,  some  true  disciples  of  Christ 
left  in  the  world,  "  because  they  have  love  one  to  another."  ' 

The  Essays  showed  no  sign  of  failing  powers.  Nor  did 
his  work  seem  less  fresh  or  his  interests  less  varied  than 
in  early  years.  His  sermon  on  the  death  of  Carlyle,  in 
February  1881,  was  as  discriminating  in  its  praise  and  as 
sympathetic  in  its  insight  as  any  of  his  earlier  obituary 
addresses.  He  watched  with  keen  interest  the  success  of 
the  Revised  Version  of  the  New  Testament.  He  himself 
reviewed  it  in  the  'Times,'  and  in  the  last  letter  which  he 
ever  wrote  to  the  Queen  he  notes  'the  just  dissatisfaction 
with  which  the  translation  of  the  "  Evil  One  "  in  the  Lord's 
Prayer  has  been  received.'  On  May  ist,  1881,  he  preached 
a  striking  sermon  on  the  death  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  and 
subsequently  attended  the  debates  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons respecting  his  proposed  monument.  '  The  minority,' 
he  notices,  'was  much  smaller  than  in  the  case  of  Pitt  — 
89  then,  53  now.'  To  him  it  was,  both  officially  and  gen- 
erally, a  bitter  disappointment  that  the  deceased  statesman 
was  not  to  be  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  but  he  fully 
recognised  the  paramount  claims  of  the  feeling  which 
prompted  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  direct  his  own  interment  at 
Hughenden.  The  following  extract,  referring  to  the  death 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  is  taken  from  the  last  letter  written 
to  Stanley  by  the  Queen  : 

'  Osborne  :  April  21st,  1881. 

'  Dear  Dean,  —  Thank  you  very  much  for  your  sympathy 
in  the  loss  of  my  dear,  great  friend,  whose  death  on  Tuesday 
last  completely  overwhelmed  me. 

'  His  devotion  and  kindness  to  me,  his  wise  counsels,  his 
great  gentleness  combined  with  firmness,  his  one  thought 


CHAP,  xxviii  INTERESTS  m  LIFE 


565 


of  the  honour  and  glory  of  the  country,  and  his  unswerving 
loyalty  to  the  Throne,  make  the  death  of  my  dear  Lord 
Beaconsfield  a  national  calamity.  My  grief  is  great  and 
lasting. 

'  I  know  he  would  wish  to  rest  with  the  wife  he  loved 
so  well,  and  not  in  Westminster  Abbey,  where,  however,  I 
am  anxious  that  a  monument  should  be  erected  to  his 
memory. 

'  Ever  yours  affectionately, 

'V.  R.  and  I.' 

In  June  and  the  early  part  of  July  1881  Stanley  showed 
no  sign  of  relaxing  his  hold  on  life.  In  the  approaching 
marriage  of  his  friend,  the  Rev.  Henry  Montgomery,  to 
Miss  Maud  Farrar,  the  daughter  of  Canon  Farrar,  he  took  a 
keen  interest.  He  discovered  that  the  last  marriage  in  the 
Abbey  of  a  Henry  to  a  Maud  was  that  of  Henry  I.  to  the 
'  Good  Queen  Maud,'  and  intended  to  notice  the  coinci- 
dence in  his  address.  His  letters  to  Mrs.  Drummond,  who 
was  then  travelling  in  Greece,  are  full  of  reminiscences  of 
places  which  he  had  not  seen  for  forty  years.  He  had 
already  mapped  out  an  expedition,  in  company  with  Dr. 
Gerald  Harper,  to  Trieste,  Pola,  and  Athens,  returning  by 
Rome,  where  he  hoped  to  meet  Hugh  Pearson  and  the 
present  Dean  of  Salisbury.  He  attended  the  dinner  of  the 
Burgesses  of  Westminster  in  his  official  capacity  as  head 
of  the  Corporation,  a  ceremony  at  which  he  was  often 
present,  because  it  amused  him  to  find  that  in  his  own 
person,  as  Dean  and  '  Mayor  of  Westminster,'  he  embodied 
his  cherished  union  of  Church  and  State.  The  loss  of 
Ashburnham  House,  which  at  the  death  of  Lord  John 
Thynne  was  transferred  to  Westminster  School,  deeply 
wounded  him,  and  all  his  energies  were  strained  to  retain 
the  historic  building  as  part  of  the  Abbey  property. 
Steadily  pursuing  to  the  last  his  aim  of  making  the  Abbey 
a  centre  of  religious  life  in  the  Metropolis,  he  arranged  a 


566 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


new  course  of  sermons  on  Saturday  afternoons  on  the 
Beatitudes,  which  he  hoped  might  attract  worshippers  to 
whom  the  ordinary  services  did  not  appeal. 

It  was  hard  to  associate  any  thought  of  physical  decay 
with  such  activity  of  mind  and  body.  If  those  who  watched 
him  most  closely,  at  times  fancied  that  they  detected 
symptoms  of  failing  strength,  their  fears  were  removed  by 
his  joyous  laugh  and  boyish  nimbleness  of  step,  or  by 
some  fresh  example  of  his  bright  imagination  and  unfailing 
memory.    Yet  the  end  was  near  at  hand. 

On  Sunday,  July  3rd,  he  preached  to  the  boys  at  Green- 
wich Hospital,  and  also  held  a  little  service  for  Sunday- 
school  teachers.  On  his  return  home  he  called  at  the 
Temple,  and  with  Dr.  Vaughan  walked  back  to  the  Abbey 
to  be  in  time  for  the  Special  Service  at  seven  o'clock.  Three 
intensely  hot  days  followed.  On  Thursday,  July  7th  —  a 
cold  and  wet  day  —  he  attended  the  annual  flower-show  held 
in  the  College  gardens  by  the  Society  for  promoting  window 
gardening  amongst  the  working-classes  of  Westminster. 

On  Saturday,  July  9th,  he  appeared  to  be  in  his  usual 
health  and  spirits.  In  the  morning  he  drove  with  Lady 
Frances  Baillie  to  the  Athen^um  Club,  and  walked  home. 
When  Lady  Frances  returned,  she  found  him  at  luncheon 
with  Mr.  Locker-Lampson.  After  luncheon  he  was  sitting 
in  the  drawing-room,  waiting  for  the  afternoon  service  at 
which  he  was  to  preach  the  fourth  of  his  sermons  on  the 
Beatitudes.^  The  butler  brought  him  a  paper  ;  he  took  it, 
and  Lady  Frances  noticed  that  his  hand  was  shaking 
violently.  Shortly  afterwards  he  left  the  room.  Lady 
Frances  followed  him,  and  found  him  walking  up  and  down 
the  library,  with  his  face  drawn  and  pale,  and  his  hands  as 
cold  as  ice.  She  immediately  sent  for  Dr.  Gerald  Harper, 
and  vainly  endeavoured  to  dissuade  him  from  going  into  the 

1  The  course  was  begun  on  Saturday,  June  i8th,  1 88 1. 


CHAP.  XXVIII  HIS  LAST  SERMON 


567 


Abbey  to  preach.  He,  however,  insisted  that  he  must  go, 
and  went.  Before  ten  minutes  were  over  he  came  out, 
faint  and  sick.  Again  he  revived,  returned  to  the  Abbey, 
and  preached  his  sermon  on  the  words,  '  Blessed  are  the 
merciful,  for  they  shall  obtain  mercy.  Blessed  are  the  pure 
in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God.'  The  short,  simple  dis- 
course contained  the  last  words  that  he  spoke  in  West- 
minster Abbey.  By  one  of  those  strange  coincidences 
that  seem  more  than  chance,  the  subject  of  his  sermon 
was  the  blessedness  of  purity  of  heart  and  life,  which  those 
who  knew  him  best  considered  to  be  the  distinguishing 
quality  of  his  character  and  career. 
'The  words,'  he  said, 

*  may  bear  a  twofold  meaning  —  pure,  disinterested  love  of 
truth,  and  pure  and  clean  aversion  to  everything  that 
defiles.  Pure  love  of  truth  —  how  very  rare,  and  yet  how 
very  beneficent !  We  do  not  see  its  merits  at  once ;  we 
do  not  perceive,  perhaps,  in  this  or  the  next  generation, 
how  widely  happiness  is  increased  in  the  world  by  the 
discoveries  of  men  of  science,  who  have  pursued  them 
simply  and  solely  because  they  were  attracted  towards  them 
by  their  single-minded  love  of  what  was  true.  Again, 
purity  from  all  that  defiles  and  stains  the  soul  —  filthy 
thoughts,  filthy  actions,  filthy  words  —  we  know  what  they 
are  without  an  attempt  to  describe  them.' 

He  goes  on  to  give  three  examples  of  the  blessedness 
of  purity  in  men  whose  hearts  and  writings  were  pure,  and 
who  not  only  abstained  from  anything  which  could  defile 
the  soul,  but  fixed  their  eyes  intently  on  those  simple  affec- 
tions and  those  great  natural  objects  of  beauty  which  most 
surely  guard  the  mind  from  corrupting  influences.  'And 
what,'  he  asks  in  the  words  which  conclude  his  last  sermon, 

'  is  the  reason  that  our  Saviour  gives  for  this  blessedness  of 
the  pure  in  heart  It  is  that  they  shall  see  God.  What  is 
the  meaning  of  this  connection  }    It  is  because,  of  all  the 


568 


LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY 


1881 


obstacles  which  can  intervene  between  us  and  an  insight  into 
the  invisible  and  the  Divine,  nothing  presents  so  coarse  and 
thick  a  veil  as  the  indulgence  of  the  impure  passions  which 
lower  our  nature,  and  because  nothing  can  so  clear  up  our 
better  thoughts,  and  nothing  leaves  our  minds  so  open  to 
receive  the  impression  of  what  is  good  and  high,  as  the 
single  eye  and  pure  conscience,  which  we  may  not,  perhaps, 
be  able  to  reach,  but  which  is  an  indispensable  condition  of 
having  the  doors  of  our  mind  kept  open  and  the  channel  of 
communication  kept  free  between  us  and  the  Supreme  and 
Eternal  Fountain  of  all  purity  and  of  all  goodness.' 

He  left  the  Abbey  for  his  bed.  The  next  day  (Sunday, 
July  loth)  he  was  too  ill  to  bear  being  read  to,  and  slept 
most  of  the  morning  and  afternoon.  On  Wednesday 
the  feverish  symptoms  had  so  far  subsided  that  he  left  his 
bedroom  in  the  course  of  the  morning,  and  went  to  the 
library  in  his  dressing-gown.  He  talked  of  his  illness  as 
a  thing  that  was  past,  refusing  to  allow  the  friends  whom 
he  expected  to  dine  with  him  in  the  evening  to  be  put  off. 
But  late  in  the  same  afternoon  a  rise  in  his  temperature 
warned  Dr.  Harper  to  order  him  back  to  bed.  He  never 
left  it  again.  Yet  in  the  evening  he  dictated  to  Dr. 
Harper,  with  all  his  usual  clearness,  a  lengthy  letter  on  a 
monument  in  the  Abbey  to  the  Parliamentarian  chiefs, 
which  he  desired  should  be  sent  to  the  '  St.  James's 
Gazette.' 

His  condition  on  Thursday,  July  14th,  showed  that 
some  serious  illness  was  impending,  and  the  late  Dr. 
Wilson  Fox,  who,  in  the  absence  of  Sir  William  Jenner, 
was  called  into  consultation,  saw  him  twice.  Very  early 
on  Friday  morning  Dr.  Harper  observed  that  an  attack  of 
erysipelas  of  the  face  had  begun,  and  Sir  William  Jenner, 
arriving  a  few  hours  later,  confirmed  his  opinion  of  the 
gravity  of  the  case.  The  erysipelas  spread  rapidly  over 
the  face,  eyelids,  and  head,  extending  down  the  neck  as  far 


CHAP.  XXVIII  HIS  LAST  ILLNESS 


569 


as  the  chest  and  the  right  shoulder.  The  condition  was 
alarming  ;  but  Stanley  himself  still  hoped  that  he  might 
be  well  enough  to  marry  his  friend  Mr.  Montgomery  on 
July  28th. 

On  Sunday,  July  17th,  he  grew  so  much  worse  that  it 
was  thought  necessary  to  summon  Canon  Pearson  without 
further  delay,  and,  at  the  same  time,  Archbishop  Tait  was 
asked  to  see  him,  and  tell  him  of  his  danger.  Before  the 
Archbishop  came  Stanley  had  rallied,  and,  by  the  advice 
of  the  doctors  in  attendance,  Dr.  Tait  left  without  seeing 
him.  During  the  night  Professor  (now  Sir  William)  Flower 
sat  up  with  the  sick  man,  in  order  to  relieve  Dr.  Harper. 
As  day  broke  a  great  change  was  noticed.  He  was  told 
that  the  worst  was  feared,  and  as  the  Archbishop  was  too 
unwell  to  be  summoned  at  such  an  early  hour,  and  as 
Hugh  Pearson  had,  by  an  unfortunate  accident,  missed 
the  last  train  from  Sonning,  Canon  (now  Archdeacon) 
Farrar,  who  was  the  Canon  in  residence,  was  sent  for. 
Prayers  were  read  to  him,  and  Mrs.  Vaughan  at  intervals 
repeated  the  simple  hymns  in  which  he  delighted. 

The  erysipelas  had  attacked  his  throat  with  such  severity 
that  his  utterance  was  feeble  and  indistinct.  But  the 
words  which  fell  from  his  lips  in  the  early  morning  of  July 
1 8th  were  heard  by  Lady  Frances  Baillie  and  others,  and 
written  down  by  Dr.  Farrar.  '  I  always  wished,'  he  said, 
'to  die  at  Westminster.  The  end  has  come  in  the  way  that 
I  most  desired  that  it  should  come.  I  could  not  have  con- 
trolled things  better.'  Again  he  spoke  :  '  I  am  perfectly 
satisfied  —  perfectly  happy.  I  have  not  the  slightest  mis- 
giving. I  always  wished  to  die  at  Westminster.'  Then  his 
thoughts  turned  in  another  direction.  '  I  should  like  Vaughan 
to  preach  my  funeral  sermon,  if  he  can  do  it.  I  have  been 
so  very  intimate  with  him.    He  has  known  me  longest.' 

Finally  he  added  :  '  I  wish  to  send  a  message  of  respect 


570  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1881 

to  the  Queen.  As  far  as  I  understood  what  the  duties  of 
my  office  were  supposed  to  be,  in  spite  of  every  incom- 
petence, I  am  yet  humbly  trustful  that  I  have  sustained 
before  the  mind  of  the  nation  the  extraordinary  value  of 
the  Abbey  as  .a  religious,  national,  and  liberal  institution.' 
The  word  'incompetence'  was  so  indistinctly  uttered  that 
it  was  not  at  first  caught  by  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  who 
repeated  after  him  the  language  of  his  message.  But,  care- 
ful as  ever  to  employ  the  precise  term  which  expressed  his 
meaning,  and  to  be  content  with  no  other,  all  substitutes 
were  rejected,  and  he  was  not  satisfied  till  the  exact  word 
was  correctly  taken  down. 

He  sent  an  affectionate  message  to  Mrs.  and  Miss  Drum- 
mond.  He  asked  to  see  the  servants,  and  to  each  as  they 
came  to  his  bedside  he  spoke  a  few  words  of  farewell 
exactly  appropriate  to  the  individual  he  addressed. 

The  Sacrament,  with  his  earnest  assent,  was  administered 
by  Canon  Farrar  to  him  and  to  those  who  were  gathered 
round  his  bed.  At  the  close  of  the  service  he  interrupted 
the  celebrant,  and,  gathering  all  his  remaining  strength, 
in  a  voice  which  for  the  moment  grew  solemn  and  distinct, 
himself  gave  the  final  benediction. 

Later  in  the  morning  a  slight  rally  and  improvement 
took  place.  If  they  were  maintained,  and  if  he  slept,  his 
life  might  yet  be  saved.  Dr.  Gerald  Harper  therefore  re- 
mained for  some  hours  in  the  sick-room  with  him  alone. 
About  the  middle  of  the  day  his  strength  became  ex- 
hausted, and  he  gradually  relapsed  into  unconsciousness. 
All  hope  was  now  gone.  During  the  evening  Canon  Pear- 
son and  Sir  George  Grove  spent  some  time  at  his  bedside, 
and  afterwards  Archbishop  Tait  and  Dr.  Vaughan,  who 
had  returned  to  London,  entered  the  room  and  prayed 
near  him.  His  breathing  gradually  became  more  and  more 
laboured,  until  at  twenty  minutes  to  twelve  on  the  night  of 


CHAP,  xxviii      HIS  DEATH  AND  FUNERAL 


Monday,  July  i8th,  1881,  it  ceased  altogether,  and,  without 
pain,  Stanley  passed  away.^ 

Hugh  Pearson  arrived  early  on  Monday  morning, 
during  the  brief  interval  of  rally  and  enforced  quiet.  '  Sir 
William  Jenner,'  he  wrote  to  the  present  Dean  of  Salisbury, 

'  said  the  only  chance  was  sleep,  and  forbade  my  seeing 
him.  This  lasted  till  8  at  night,  when  he  pronounced  all 
hope  to  be  gone,  and  I  went  into  the  room  at  once.  I  did 
not  see  his  face  —  the  room  was  darkened,  and  his  face  was 
covered.  Sir  W.  J.  had  entreated'  me  not  to  see  him.  He 
was  quite  unrecognisable,  and  he  said  the  sight  would  haunt 
me. 

'  On  speaking  to  him,  and  taking  his  hand,  he  pressed 
mine,  and  began  talking  eagerly.  But,  alas  !  there  was 
nothing  to  be  made  out,  only  a  word  or  two  that  I  could 
guess  at.  In  an  hour  or  so  he  became  unconscious,  and 
passed  away  in  perfect  peace  —  two  long  sighs,  and  not  the 
slightest  movement  of  the  head  or  hand.  There  was  no 
suffering  throughout,  thank  God  ! 

'  He  was  able  to  send  some  messages  on  Sunday  night, 
and  spoke  to  Farrar.  You  will  hear  all.  He  asked  repeat- 
edly when  I  was  coming.  I  cannot  write  more,  but  I  hope 
we  shall  meet  on  Monday.  I  desired  a  ticket  to  be  sent  to 
you  for  the  Jerusalem  Chamber. 

'What  can  one  look  forward  to  in  the  future  for  the 
Church  without  him !  For  myself  the  light  is  gone  out  of 
life.' 

Stanley  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  Monday, 
July  25th,  1881.  The  precedent  of  Lady  Augusta's 
funeral  was,  as  far  as  possible,  followed  in  all  the  details 
of  the  ceremony.  The  coffin  was  carried  by  ten  pall- 
bearers :  the  Duke  of  Westminster ;  the  Bishop  of  Exeter 
(Dr.  Temple) ;  Mr.  Spottiswoode,  President  of  the  Royal 
Society,  representing  Science  ;  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  repre- 
senting Literature  ;  Professor  Jowett  and  Canon  Westcott, 

'  The  account  of  Dean  Stanley's  illness  has  been  corrected  by  Dr.  Gerald 
Harper,  who  never  left  the  Deanery  from  the  beginning  till  the  end  of  the 
fatal  attack. 


5/2  LIFE  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  1881 

representing  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge; 
Dr.  Stoughton  for  English  Nonconformity,  Dr.  Story  for 
the  Established  Church  of  Scotland,  Mr.  W.  H.  Smith  and 
Mr.  W.  E.  Forster  for  the  House  of  Commons,  and  for  the 
Opposition  and  the  Government.  Dr.  Vaughan  was  the 
chief  mourner. 

The  most  representative  gathering  that  ever  had  col- 
lected within  the  walls  of  the  Abbey  on  such  an  occasion 
bore  witness  to  the  unique  position  which  he  had  held, 
and  to  the  bonds  of  personal  friendship,  love,  and  respect 
by  which  he  had  bound  to  himself  the  miscellaneous 
multitude  of  mourners.  Not  only  did  the  vast  assembly 
collect  in  and  around  the  building,  as  part  of  a  great  nation, 
to  lament  a  public  loss  and  national  calamity ;  they  came 
also  as  individuals,  to  deplore  the  passing  away  of  a  private 
friend.  Leaders  in  Church  and  State,  the  foremost  men 
in  science,  literature,  art,  and  learning,  representatives 
of  all  the  various  Churches  in  the  country,  ministers  of 
all  denominations,  persons  of  every  variety  of  religious 
belief,  and  a  great  concourse  of  men,  women,  and  children, 
whose  grief  was  not  the  less  sincere,  nor  their  loss  the  less 
great,  because  they  themselves  were  unknown,  followed 
him  with  tears  to  his  grave  in  the  Abbey  of  which  for  sev- 
enteen years  he  had  been  the  soul,  the  glory,  and  charm. 

He  was  buried,  by  the  permission  of  the  Queen,  in  the 
Chapel  of  Henry  VH.,  by  the  side  of  his  wife.  Death,  as 
his  own  lines  express  with  touching  beauty,  reunited  the 
two  hearts  which,  five  years  before,  Death  had  divided. 

"Till  Death  us  part." 

So  speaks  the  heart 
When  each  to  each  repeats  the  words  of  doom ; 

Thro'  blessing  and  thro'  curse. 

For  better  and  for  worse, 
We  will  be  one,  till  that  dread  hour  shall  come. 


CHAP.  XXVIII        HIS  DEATH  AND  BURIAL 


573 


Life,  with  its  myriad  grasp, 

Our  yearning  souls  shall  clasp, 
By  ceaseless  love,  and  still-expectant  wonder ; 

In  bonds  that  shall  endure, 

Indissolubly  sure. 
Till  God  in  death  shall  part  our  paths  asunder. 

Till  Death  us  join. 

O  voice  yet  more  Divine  ! 
That  to  the  broken  heart  breathes  hope  sublime ; 

Through  lonely  hours. 

And  shattered  powers. 
We  still  are  one,  despite  of  change  and  time. 

Death,  with  his  healing  hand. 

Shall  once  more  knit  the  band, 
Which  needs  but  that  one  link  which  none  may  sever 

Till  through  the  Only  Good, 

Heard,  felt,  and  understood. 
Our  life  in  God  shall  make  us  one  for  ever. 


APPENDIX 


The  following  list  of  Stanley'' s  publications,  without  claiming  to  be  an 
exhaustive  or  a  scientific  Bibliography,  may  be  of  assistance  to  the 
reader.  The  most  important  works  are  distinguished  by  italics. 
The  dates  given  are  those  of  the  first  English  editions ;  those  of 
American  editions  do  not  in  all  cases  correspond. 


'The  Gypsies:'  a  Prize  Poem  recited  in  the  Theatre,  Oxford.  i2mo. 
Oxford,  1837. 

'  Do  States,  like  Individuals,  inevitably  tend,  after  a  certain  period  of 
maturity,  to  decay? '    The  Chancellor's  Prize  Essay.  Oxford,  1840. 

*A  Sermon  preached  in  the  Chapel  of  Rugby  School  on  the  Death  of 
the  Rev.  T.  Arnold.'    8vo.    Rugby,  1S42. 

The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Arnold.  2  vols.,  8vo.  London, 
1844. 

'  Miscellaneous  Works  of  Thomas  Arnold.'    Collected  and  republished 

by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1845. 
Sermons  and  Essays  ott  the  Apostolical  Age.    8vo.    Oxford,  1847. 
Addresses  and  Charges  of  E.  Stanley,  Bishop  of  Norwich.    With  a 

Memoir  by  A.  P.  Stanley .    8vo.    London,  185 1. 
'The  Study  of  Modern  History.'    A  Lecture  delivered  before  the 

Young  Men's  Christian  Association.    8vo.    London,  1854. 
The  Epistles  of 'St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians.    With  Critical  Notes  and 

Dissertations.    2  vols.,  8vo.    London,  1855. 
'Foundation  and  Superstructure.'    A  Sermon.    8vo.    London,  1855. 
'  The  Work  of  an  Evangelist.'    A  Sermon.    8vo.    Norwich,  1855. 
Historical  Mejnorials  of  Canterbury.    8vo.    London,  1855. 
'The  Reformation.'    A  Lecture.    ('Evening  Recreations,'  edited  by 

J.  H.  Gurney.)    8vo.    London,  1856. 
Sitiai  and  Palestine,  in  connection  with  their  Histofj.    8vo.  London, 

1856. 

'  Life  and  Death.'  A  Sermon  preached  after  the  Funeral  of  W.  H.  Lyall. 

8vo.    London,  1857. 
Three  Introductory  Lectures  on  the  Study  of  Ecclesiastical  History. 

8vo.    Oxford,  1857. 
'The  Repentance  of  David.'    A  Sermon.    (Oxford  Lenten  Sermons, 

No.  2.)    8vo.    O.xford,  1858. 
The  Unity  of  Evangelical  and  Apostolical  Teaching.    Sermons,  jnostly 

preached  at  Canterbury  Cathedral.    8vo.    London,  1859. 

575 


576 


APPENDIX 


'Follow  Paul  and  Follow  Christ.'    A  Sermon  preached  at  St.  Paul's 

Cathedral.    i2mo.    London,  1859. 
'  Freedom '  and  '  Labour.'    Two  Sermons.    8vo.    London,  i860. 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Eastern  Church.    With  an  Introduction 

on  the  Study  of  Ecclesiastical  History.    8vo.    London,  1861. 
Serfnons  in  the  East,  preached  before  the  Prince  of  Wales  during  his 

Tour  in  the  Spring  of  i%(>2.    Svo.    London,  1863. 
'  The  Grieving  of  the  Spirit.'    A  Sermon.    (Oxford  Lenten  Sermons, 

No.  5.)    8vo.    London,  1863. 
'  Human  Corruption.'    A  Sermon.    8vo.    London,  1863. 
'The  Bible,  its  Form  and  its  Substance.'    Three  Sermons  on  Heb.  i. 

I,  2.    8vo.    London,  1863. 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  t lie  Jewish  Church.    Part  L   Svo.  London, 

1863. 

'A  Letter  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  London  on  the  State  of  Subscription 
in  the  Church  of  England  and  in  the  University  of  Oxford.'  Svo. 
London,  1863. 

'Great  Opportunities.'  A  Farewell  Sermon.  Svo.  Oxford  and 
London,  1S63. 

'A  Reasonable,  Holy,  and  Living  Sacrifice.'  A  Sermon  pieached  by 
A.  P.  Stanley,  Dean  of  Westminster,  in  Westminster  Abbey,  on 
January  10,  1864,  being  the  day  following  his  Installation.  i2mo. 
London,  1864. 

'The  Encouragements  of  Ordination.'    A  Sermon  preached  in  St. 

Paul's  Cathedral,  at  the  Ordination  of  the  Lord  Bishop  of  London. 

Svo.    London,  1S64. 
'Thy  Kingdom  Come.'  A  Sermon  preached  at  Windsor  Castle.  Svo. 

London,  1864. 

'  The  Creation  of  Man.'  A  Sermon  preached  on  behalf  of  the  Royal 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals.  Svo.  London, 
1865. 

Lectjires  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish  Church.  Part  II.  Svo.  London, 
1865. 

'The  Dedication  of  Westminster  Abbey.'  A  Sermon  preached  on  the 
Sooth  Anniversary  of  its  Foundation.    Svo.    London,  1866. 

'The  Crusade  of  Charity.'    A  Sermon.    Svo.    London,  1 866. 

'The  Coronation  of  William  the  Conqueror,  and  its  Consequences.' 
A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  Christmas  Day, 
1866.    Svo.    London,  1867. 

'The  South  African  Controversy  in  its  relation  to  the  Church  of 
England.'  A  Speech  delivered  in  the  Lower  House  of  Convoca- 
tion.   Svo.    London,  1867. 

'The  Authority  of  Christ.'  A  Sermon  preached  to  Working  People. 
Svo.    London,  1S67. 

An  Address  on  the  Connection  of  Church  and  State,  delivered  at  Sion 
College  on  Febriiary  15,  1868.    Svoi    London,  1868. 


APPENDIX 


S77 


Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey.    8vo.    London,  1868. 
'  A  Threefold  Call.'    A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey  on 

the  occasion  of  the  National  Thanksgiving  for  the  escape  of  the 

Duke  of  Edinburgh,  and  for  the  success  of  the  Abyssinian  War. 

8vo.    London,  1868. 
The  Three  Irish  Chirches:  ati  Historical  Address  delivered  at  Sion 

College  on  January  28,  1869.    8vo.    London,  1869. 
'The  Spirit  within  the  Wheels.'    A  Sermon.     i2mo.    London,  1869. 
Essays,  chiefly  on  Questions  of  Church  and  State,  from  1850  to  1870. 

8vo.    London,  1870. 
'The  Greek  Massacre.'    A  Sermon  preached  on  May  15,  1870,  being 

the  day  after  the  arrival  in  England  of  the  remains  of  E.  Herbert 

and  F.  Vyner,  murdered  in  Greece,  April  21,  1870.    8vo.  London, 

1870. 

*  A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey  the  Sunday  following  the 
Funeral  of  Charles  Dickens.'    8vo.    London,  1870. 

'  The  Athanasian  Creed,'  with  a  Preface  on  the  General  Recommenda- 
tion of  the  Ritual  Commission.  (Republished  from  the  'Contem- 
porary Review.')    8vo.    London,  1871. 

'The  Distress  in  Paris.'    A  Sermon.    8vo.    London,  1871. 

'Let  there  be  light.'  A  Sermon  delivered  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
January  28,  1872.    8vo.    London,  1872. 

'  The  National  Thanksgiving  for  the  Recovery  of  Albert  Edward,  Prince 
of  Wales.'  Three  Sermons  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
8vo.    London,  1872. 

'The  Lifting  up  of  the  Everlasting  Gates.'  A  Sermon  preached  at 
the  Reopening  of  Chester  Cathedral.    8vo.    London,  1872. 

'  The  Two  Great  Commandments.'  A  Sermon  preached  in  the 
Town  Church  of  St.  Andrews,  August  25,  1872.  8vo.  London, 
1872. 

Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  delivered  in  Edin- 
burgh in  1872.    8vo.    London,  1872. 

'  The  Prospect  of  Christian  Missions.'  A  Sermon  preached  on  the 
Day  of  Intercession,  December  20,  1872.    8vo.    London,  1873. 

'Purity  and  Light.'  A  Sermon  preached  on  the  Sunday  following  the 
Death  of  Adam  Sedgwick.    8vo.    London,  1873. 

'The  Persian  King.'  A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
before  the  Queen's  Westminster  Volunteers,  on  Sunday,  June  22, 

1873.  8vo.    London,  1873. 

'The  Marriage  Feast.'  A  Sermon  preached  at  St.  Petersburg  before 
the  Marriage  of  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  and  the  Grand  Duchess 
Marie  Alexandrovna,  on  January  6,  1874.  8vo.  St.  Petersburg, 
1874. 

'Christian  Suretyship.'  A  Sermon  preached  at  Windsor  Castle  on 
the  arrival  of  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Edinburgh  on  March  8, 

1874.  8vo.    London, 1874. 

VOL.  II.  pp 


578 


APPENDIX 


'The  Character  of  John  Bunyan.'  See  'The  Book  of  the  Bunyan 
Festival,'  June  lo,  1874.  Edited  by  W.  H.  Wylie.  8vo.  London, 
1874. 

'Charles  Kingsley/     A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey, 

January  31,  1875.    8vo.    London,  1875. 
'The  Early  Christianity  of  Northumbria.'    A  Lecture  reprinted  from 

'  Good  Words.'    i6mo.    London,  1875. 
Inaugural  Address  as  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 

March  31,  1875.    ^vo.    London,  1875. 
'  England  and  India.'    A  Sermon.    8vo.    London,  1875. 
'The  Return  of  the  Traveller.'    A  Sermon  preached  in  the  presence  of 

the  Prince  of  Wales,  May  14,  1876.    8vo.    London,  1876. 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish  Church.   Part  III.  8vo.  London, 

1876. 

Addresses  and  Sermons  delivered  at  St.  Andrews  in  1872,  1875,  1877. 

8vo.    London,  1877. 
'  Sick   Children.'     A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey  to 

Children  on  Holy  Innocents'  Day,  1877.    8vo.    London,  1878. 
Addresses  and  Sermons  delivered  during  a  visit  to  the  United  States 

and  Canada  in  1878.    8vo.    New  York,  1879. 
A  Sermon  preached  at  the  International  Agricultural  Exhibition,  held 

at  Kilburn,  London,  on  Sunday,  June  29,  1879.    8vo.  London, 

1879. 

'The  Church  of  St.  Cybi.'    A  Sermon  preached  at  the  reopening  of 

St.  Cybi's  Church,  Holyhead.    8vo.    London,  1879. 
An  Address  delivered  to  the  Friends  of  the  Hon.  Sir  Arthur  Gordon, 

Governor  of  the  Fiji  Islands,  in  King  Henry  the  Seventh's  Chapel, 

Westminster  Abbey,  on  July  4,  1879.    8vo.    London,  1879. 
'  An  Indian  Statesman.'    Being  the  Funeral  Sermon  of  Lord  Lawrence. 

8vo.    London,  1879. 
Memoirs  of  Edward  and  Catherine  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1879. 
'The   Sixty-eighth  Psalm.'     A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster 

Abbey,  before  the  Corps  of  Commissionaires,  on  February  13, 

1881.    Svo.    London,  1881. 
'The  Days  of  Old.'    A  Sermon  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey  on 

the  Sunday  following  the  Death  of  Lord  John  Thynne,  Sub-Dean 

of  Westminster.    8vo.    London,  1881. 
Christian  Institutions.     Essays  on   Ecclesiastical  Subjects.  Svo. 

London,  1881. 


'Sermons  on  Special  Occasions,'  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Svo.    London,  1882. 
'  Sermons  for  Children,'  including  the  '  Beatitudes '  and  the  '  Faithful 

Servant.'   Svo.    London,  1887. 


APPENDIX 


579 


'Proposed  Water-supply  and  Sewerage  for  Jerusalem.'  By  J.  I. 
Whitty.  With  an  Introduction  by  Canon  Stanley.  8vo.  London, 
1863. 

'God  in  History.'    By  Baron  Bunsen.    With  a  Preface  by  A.  P. 

Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1868. 
'Facsimile  of  the  Black-Letter  Prayer  Book  printed  in  1639.'    With  a 

Preface  by  A.  P.  Stanley.    Fol.    London,  1871. 
'  The  Recovery  of  Jerusalem.'    By  Captain  C.  W.  Wilson,  R.E.  With 

an  Introduction  by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1871. 
'  Impressions  of  Greece.'    By  the  Right  Hon.  Sir  T.  Wyse.    With  an 

Introduction  by  Miss  Wyse,  and  Letters  from  Greece  to  Friends 

at  Home  by  A.  P.  S.    8vo.    London,  1871. 
'Letters  and  Journals  of  the  Earl  of  Elgin.'    With  a  Preface  by  A.  P. 

Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1872. 
'On  Missions.'    By  F.  M.  Miiller.    With  an  Introductory  Sermon  by 

A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1873. 
'Catholic  Reform.'    By  C.  J.  M.  Loyson  (P^re  Hyacinthe).    With  a 

Preface  by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1874. 
'The  Victory  of  Faith.'    By  J.  C.  Hare.    With  Introductory  Notices 

by  F.  D.  Maurice  and  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1874. 
'  A  Layman's  Legacy.'    By  Samuel  Greg.    With  a  Prefatory  Letter  by 

A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1877. 
'New  Biblia  Pauperum.'    With  a  Prefatory  Notice  by  A.  P.  Stanley. 

4to.    London,  1877. 
'The  Eastern  Question.'    By  S.  Canning,  Viscount   Stratford  de 

Redcliffe.    With  a  Preface  by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.  London, 

1881. 

'  Letters  to  a  Friend.'  By  C.  Thirlwall,  Bishop  of  St.  David's.  Edited 
by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1881. 

'Church  and  Chapel.'  Edited  by  R.  H.  Hadden.  With  an  Introduc- 
tion by  A.  P.  Stanley.    8vo.    London,  1881. 


Articles 

I .  The  Quarterly  Review 

' Grote's  " History  of  Greece."'    March,  1850. 

'Socrates.'    December,  1850. 

'Murder  of  Becket.'    September,  1853. 

'Sacred  Geography.'    March,  1854. 

'  Milman's  "  Latin  Christianity." '    June,  1854. 

'  Archdeacon  Hare.'    June,  1855. 

'Travels  in  Greece.'    April,  1869. 

'Reconstruction  of  the  Irish  Church.'    October,  1869. 

'The  Church  of  France.'    July,  1873. 


p  p  2 


58o 


APPENDIX 


2.  The  Edinburgh  Review 
'  The  Gorham  Case.'    July,  1850. 

Essays  and  Reviews." '    April,  1861. 
'The  Three  Pastorals.'    July,  1864. 
'Ritualism.'    April,  1867. 

'Due  de  Broglie's  "Lower  Empire."'    July,  1867. 

'The  CEcumenical  Council.'    October,  1869. 

'The  Pope  and  the  Council.'    July,  1871. 

'The  Bennett  Judgment.'    July,  1872. 

'The  Church  and  Dissent.'    January,  1873. 

'  GefFcken's  "  Church  and  State." '    July,  1877. 

'Religious  Movement  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.'    April,  1881. 

3.  Eraser'' s  Magazine 

'Theology  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.'    February,  1865. 
'Gains  of  the  Church  in  1865.'    December,  1865. 
'Variations  of  the  Romish  Church.'    May,  1880. 
'Inveraweand  Ticonderoga.'    October,  1880. 

4.  Macmillan's  Magazine 

'The  Ammergau  Mystery;  or,  Sacred  Drama  of  i860.'   October,  i860. 
Note  on  the  above  Article.    November,  i860. 
'  Hymn  of  the  Ascension.'    June,  1862. 
"'Ecce  Homo.'"    June,  1866. 

'  Recollections  of  Philaret,  Archbishop  and  Metropolitan  of  Moscow.' 
February,  1868. 

'The  Late  Dean  of  St.  Paul's'  (Dr.  Milman).    January,  1869. 
'Dies  Irae.'    December,  1868. 
'JohnKeble.'    March,  1869. 

'The  Pope's  Posture  in  the  Communion.'    July,  1869. 
Note  to  the  above  Article.    September,  1869. 
'Hymn  on  the  Transfiguration.'    April,  1870. 
'Traveller's  Hymn  for  All  Saints'  Day.'    November,  1872. 
'  Hymn  for  Advent.'    December,  1872. 

'Hymn  on  the  Accession  (June  20),  for  National  Blessings.'  June, 
1873- 

'Two  Addresses:'  i.  John  Bunyan ;  ii.  Arnold  and  Rugby.  July, 
1874. 

'Addresses  at  Cheshunt  College.'    August,  1874. 
'This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me.'    November,  1874. 
'  The  Untravelled  Traveller '  (written  on  the  recovery  of  Prince  Leo- 
pold).   March,  1875. 
'Richard  Baxter.'    September,  1875. 
'The  Hopes  of  Theology.'    May,  1877. 
'  The  Education  of  After-Life.'    December,  1877. 


APPENDIX 


581 


'The  English  Law  of  Burial.'    March,  1378. 

'Our  Future  Hope:  an  Easter  Hymn.'    May,  1878. 

'  Historical  Aspect  of  the  United  States.'    January,  1879. 

'Historical  Aspect  of  the  American  Churches.'    June,  1879. 

'Manzoni's  Hymn  for  Whitsunday.'    May,  1879. 

'  Hymn  for  St.  John  Baptist's  Day'  (June  24).    July,  1879- 

Note  on  the  American  Churches.    December,  1879. 

'The  Divine  Life.'    May,  1880. 

'Subscription.'    January,  188 1. 

'  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith.'    August,  1881. 

5.  Good  Words 

'  On  Sunday  Evenings.'    February,  1861. 
'The  Songs  of  Israel.'    February,  1863. 
'The  Last  Words  of  David.'    July,  1864. 
'The  Past  and  the  Future.'    February,  1868. 
'  Palestine  Exploration.'    March,  1868. 

'Some  Characteristics  of  the  Papacy.'    May,  1868,  and  June,  1868. 

'The  Litany.'    July,  1868. 

'The  Christian  Rule  of  Speech.'    August,  1869. 

'Science  and  Religion.'    July,  1871. 

'The  Religious  Aspect  of  History.'    August,  1871. 

'The  Religious  Aspect  of  the  late  War.'    September,  187 1. 

'The  Religious  Aspect  of  Scripture.'    October,  1871. 

'Frederick  Denison  Maurice.'    May,  1872. 

'  In  Memoriam  :  Dr.  Norman  Macleod.'    July,  1872. 

'  Richard  Hooker.'    January,  1873. 

'The  Wrestling  of  Jacob.'    January,  1874. 

'The  Mission  of  the  Traveller.'    May,  1874. 

'  Christian  Fraternity.'    January,  1875. 

'The  Religious  Aspect  of  Geology.'    April,  1875. 

'The  Early  Christianity  of  Northumbria.'    June,  1875. 

'The  Religious  Use  of  Wisdom.'    September,  1875. 

'The  Continuity  and  Discontinuity  of  the  Church.'    July,  1876. 

'Spiritual  Religion.'    October,  1876. 

'  The  Children's  Psalms.'    February,  1877. 

'The  Gospel  of  Travellers.'    October,  1877. 

'  Diversity  in  Unity.'    January,  1878. 

'  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Gothic  Architecture.'   June,  1878. 
'The  Close  of  the  Mission  Services  on  St.  Andrew's  Day.'  January, 
1879. 

'St.  Christopher.'    A  Sermon  to  Children.    February,  1879. 
'Children's  Creed.'    February,  1880. 
'The  Ten  Commandments.'    May,  1880. 
*  Talitha  Cumi.'    February,  188 1. 


582 


APPENDIX 


6.  The  Contemporary  Review 
*  Dr.  Pusey's  Eirenicon.'    April,  1866. 

'The  Athanasian  Creed.'    August,  1870,  and  November,  1870. 

'Dean  Alford.'    March,  1871. 

'What  is  Disestablishment? '    May,  1871. 

<The  Eighth  Article.'    April,  1872. 

'The  Old  Catholics  and  the  Ultramontanes.'    April,  1873. 
'How  shall  we  deal  with  the  Rubrics?'    February,  1874. 
'Christianity  and  Ultramontanism.'    August,  1874. 
'  Ecclesiastical  Vestments.'    February,  1875. 

7.  T/ie  Nineteenth  Century 

'Absolution.'  January,  1878. 
'The  Eucharist.'  May,  1878. 
'Baptism.'    October,  1879. 

'The  Creed  of  the  Early  Christians.'    August,  1880. 


INDEX 


ACLAND,  Sir  Henry,  ii.  392. 
Adelsberg,  Count,  ii.  429. 
Adelsberg,  Countess,  ii.  432. 
Addresses  and  Sermons  on  America, 

ii-  534.  542. 
Albert,  Prince,  ii.  60. 
Alexander,  Bishop  (Jerusalem),  i.  305. 
Alexander  II.,  Czar,  ii.  427  et  seq., 

436,  439.  446,  449- 

Alexis,  Grand  Duke,  ii.  429. 

Allen,  Ellen,  i.  469. 

Allen,  H.  G.,  i.  41,  61. 

Allen,  Rev.  Hugh,  ii.  26. 

AUon,  Dr.,  ii.  41. 

Amberley,  Lord,  ii.  469. 

America,  visit  to,  ii.  510. 

Andrassy,  Count,  ii.  443. 

Andre,  Major,  ii.  525. 

Anstey,  Rev.  C.  A.,  i.  37,  49. 

Anthoinus,  Abbot,  ii.  58. 

Antony,  Prior  (Troitzka  Monastery), 
i.  521, 

Arago,  M.,  i.  391,  399. 

Argyll,  Duchess  of,  ii.  492,  509. 

Arndt,  Professor,  i.  222,  256. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  i.  45,  312,  391 ;  ii. 
321,  493,  571. 

Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  i.  38;  Stanley's 
devotion  to,  i.  78,  94-98,  102; 
pamphlet  on  Church  Reform,  i.  96; 
his  visit  to  the  Stanleys,  i.  98  et 
seq.;  his  sermons  on  'Interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture,'  i.  Ill;  '  Oxford 
Malignants  and  Dr.  Hampden,'  i. 
159;  Professor  of  Modern  History, 
i.  304,  306;  his  inaugural  lecture, 
i.  307;  his  death  and  funeral,  i.  311, 
312;  his  'Life,'  by  Stanley,  i.  319 
et  seq. ;  Stanley's  address  on,  ii.  454. 


Arnold,  Mrs.  Thomas,  i.  45,  312,  320; 

ii.  139,  415. 
Ascanius,  Archbishop  (Kief),  ii.  430. 
Athanasian  Creed,  i.  225;  ii.  16,  222, 

231-235- 
Athens,  i.  274. 
Athole,  Duchess  of,  ii.  124. 
Atkins,  George,  i.  75. 
Augusta,  Empress  of  Germany,  ii.  350, 

366,  413. 

Baden,  Grand  Duchess  Stephanie  of, 

i.  165,  258;  ii.  367. 
Baden,  Grand  Duke  of,  ii.  405. 
Baden-Powell,  Professor,  i.  421;  ii.  30 

et  seq. 

Bagot,  Bishop  (Oxford),  i.  226,  293. 
Baillie,  James,  ii.  438. 
Baillie,  Lady  Frances,  ii.  350,  491,  566, 
569- 

Baillie,  Evan  P.  M.,  ii.  350,  458. 
Bajanoff,  ii.  430,  432. 
Balston,  H.,  i.  188. 
Bancroft,  George,  ii.  522. 
Bannerman,  Campbell,  ii.  474. 
Barnby,  Sir  Joseph,  ii.  298. 
Barrington,  Lady  C,  ii.  124. 
Baxter,  Richard,  ii.  244. 
Bayley,  Rev.  G.  G.,  i.  158. 
Beaconsfield,  Lord,  ii.  266,  397,  39S, 

447,  448,  500. 
Beatrice,  Princess,  ii.  127. 
Bekker,  Professor,  i.  329. 
Bell,  Rev.  E.,  ii.  547. 
Bennett,  Rev.  Mr.,  and  the  '  Bennett 

Judgment,'  ii.  212. 
Bennett,  Sir  Sterndale,  ii.  320. 
Benson,  Archbishop  (Canterbury),  ii. 

140,  448. 


584 


INDEX 


Berlin,  ii.  423,  442. 
Berne,  i.  257. 

Besant,  Mrs.  Annie,  ii.  451. 
Bickersteth,  Bishop  (Ripon),  ii.  289. 
Bird,  Roger,  i.  40,  42. 
Bismarck,  Prince,  ii.  404,  425. 
Blanc,  Louis,  i.  396,  400. 
Bleek,  Professor,  i.  257. 
Blomfield,  Bishop  (London),  i.  247. 
Bloudhoff,  Countess,  ii.  426,  429,  432, 
444-446. 

Bocking,  Professor,  i.  219,  256,  329. 

Boileau,  Sir  T.,  i.  263. 

Bosworth,  Dr.,  ii.  227. 

Bottcher,  Professor,  i.  329. 

Bowen,  Lord  Justice,  ii.  41,  141. 

Bowring,  Dr.,  i.  202. 

Boyle,  Dean  (Salisbury),  ii.  494,  571. 

Bradley,  Dean  (Westminster),  i.  332, 
355.  357.  466;  ii.  22. 

Brandis,  Professor,  i.  257. 

Brazil,  Emperor  of,  ii.  305. 

Bright,  Dr.  W.,  ii.  372. 

Brodie,  C.  B.,  i.  169. 

Brooke,  Rev.  Stopford,  ii.  291. 

Brooks,  Bishop  Phillips  (Massachu- 
setts), ii.  207,  520,  521. 

Browne,  Bishop  Harold  (Ely),  ii. 
371- 

Browning,  Robert,  ii.  474. 
Bruce,  General,  ii.  63,  67,  73,  81,  92 
ei  seq. 

Bruce,  Lady  Augusta.    See  Stanley, 

Lady  Augusta. 
Bruce,  Mrs.,  ii.  94,  123,  128. 
Bruce,  Sir  Frederick,  ii.  201. 
Bruges,  i.  218,  256. 
Bryce,  Edward,  ii.  243. 
Buccleuch,  Duchess  of,  ii.  333. 
Bull,  Canon  (Christ  Church),  i.  535. 
Bunsen,  Charles,  i.  259,  330,  391. 
Bunyan,  John,  i.  504;  ii.  243,  454. 
Burgess,  Sarah  (Stanley's  nurse),  i.  6, 

16,  436,  470. 
Burgon,  Dean  J.  W.  (Chichester),  ii. 

226. 

Burial  laws,  ii.  504. 
Burns,  Robert,  ii.  460. 
Butler,  Rev.  A.  G.,  i.  358,  428,  510, 
511;  ii.  12,  482. 


Caird,  Principal  James,  ii.  297,  474. 

Cairo,  ii.  68. 

Calvert,  Consul,  ii.  72. 

Campbell,  Major  Duncan  (Inverawe), 

ii.  528  et  seq. 
Campbell,  Rev.  J.  M.  ('  Nature  of  the 

Atonement '),  i.  495;  ii.  392. 
Candhsh,  Dr.,  ii.  391. 
Canosa,  ii.  137. 
Canterbury,  life  at,  i.  466. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,   i.    216,  430;  ii, 

500. 

Catherine,  Grand  Duchess,  ii.  436. 

Cavaignac,  General,  i.  404. 

Cervantes,  ii.  242. 

Chalcedon,  Bishop  of,  ii.  54. 

Chalmers,  Dr.,  ii.  243,  391. 

Chamier,  Captain,  i.  403. 
[  Changarnier,  General,  i.  404. 

Channel  Islands,  ii.  550. 

Chasles,  ^L,  ii.  362. 

Chesshyre,  Canon  (Canterbury),  ii.  I. 

Childs,  G.  W'.,  ii.  523,  524,  540. 

Chreptowitch,  ii.  437. 

'  Christian  Institutions,'  ii.  554  et  seq. 

Church  and  State,  i.  384;  ii.  185,  261- 
263,  504  et  seq. 

Church,  Dean  R.  W.  (St.  Paul's),  L 
218,  340;  ii.  141,  492. 

Churton,  Mr.,  i.  123. 

Clanwilliam,  Lord,  i.  439. 

Clarendon,  Lord,  i.  493. 

Clarke,  Professor,  ii.  54,  55. 

Claughton,  Bishop  P.  (St.  Albans),  i. 
129,  172;  ii.  289. 

Qerke,  Archdeacon,  i.  227,  244. 

Clough,  A.  H.,  i.  306. 

Colenso,  Bishop  (Natal),  ii.  99,  loi- 
107,  190  et  seq.,  290-295,  334. 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  i.  lOl. 

Coleridge,  Lord,  ii.  296. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  '  Letters  on  Inspira- 
tion,' i.  Ill,  114;  'Aids  to  Re- 
flection,' i.  478. 

Cologne,  ii.  409. 

Colonna,  Duchess  of,  ii.  363. 

Colquhoun,  Consul-General,  ii.  67. 

Colville,  Colonel,  ii.  426. 

Congreve,  Richard,  ii.  41. 

Consort,  Prince,  ii.  60. 


INDEX 


Constantine,  Grand  Duke,  ii.  433, 
435.  442. 

Constantinople,  ii.  48. 

Convocation  (Lower  House),  Chroni- 
cle of,  ii.  187-190,  193-195,  208- 
215,  216-220,  224,  225,  230. 

Conway,  Canon,  ii.  400. 

Copleston,  Bishop,  i.  156. 

Corfu,  i.  267. 

Cotton,  Bishop  G.  E.  L.  (Calcutta),  i. 

244,  426,  497;  ii.  22,  252,  356. 
Courtenay,  Mr.,  i.  149. 
Coutloumoussi,  Abbot  of,  ii.  56. 
Coxe,  Bishop  Cleveland  (Western  New 

York),  ii.  511. 
Cramer,  Dr.,  i.  315. 
Crimean  War,  i.  489. 

Dalecarlia,  i.  272. 
Dampier,  J.  L.,  i.  421. 
Darboy,  Archbishop  (Paris),  ii.  402. 
Dasent,  Sir  George,  ii.  335. 
d'Aubigne,  Merle,  ii.  413. 
Davidson,  Strachan,  i.  460. 
Davies,  Rev.  J.  LI.,  ii.  468. 
Deik,  Francis,  ii.  52. 
de  Broglie,  Albert,  Due,  ii.  257,  340. 
de  Bunsen,  Henry,  ii.  115,  339,  361, 
370- 

de  Circourt,  M.,  i.  533;  ii.  151,  238, 
383,  410,  456,  468,  471,  474,  482, 
502. 

de  Morny,  M.,  i.  493. 
Denison,  Archdeacon,  ii.  225. 
Denison,  Bishop  (Salisbury),  i.  175, 
177. 

Denmark,  visit  to,  ii.  45. 

de  Paris,  Comte,  ii.  471. 

Derby,  Lord,  ii.  321. 

de  Saulcy,  M.,  i.  493. 

Dickens,  Charles,  ii.  317,  321-324. 

Dissenters'  Bill,  i.  107,  142. 

Djarlieb  (Stanley's  courier),  i.  510,  51 1. 

Dodson,  Mr.,  ii.  118. 

Dollinger,  Dr.,  ii.  242,  369. 

Donkin,  Professor  W.  F.,  i.  216,  262, 

297,  480;  ii.  144. 
Dresden,  i.  328. 

Drummond,  Mrs.,  ii.  475,  489,  491, 
518,  521,  532,  544,  570. 


DufFerin  and  Ava,  Earl  of,  ii.  268, 
527- 

Dugdale,  Mr.,  i.  141. 
Dupanloup,  Bishop  (Orleans),  ii.  360. 
Dupont  de  I'Eure,  M.,  i.  400. 
Durham,  Bishop  of,  i.  206. 

Eastern  tours,  i.  445 ;  ii.  66. 
Ebury,  Lord,  ii.  118. 
'  Ecce  Homo,'  ii.  253  et  seq. 
Edinburgh,  Duchess  of,  ii.  422  et  seq., 
433.  445- 

Edinburgh,  Duke  of,  ii.  416,  430,  433. 

Edmund  of  Lancaster  (the  Crouch- 
back),  ii.  337. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  ii.  532. 

Egerton,  E.,  i.  122. 

Egypt,  visit  to,  i.  446;  ii.  68. 

Elgin,  Lord,  ii.  150. 

EUicott,  Bishop  (Gloucester),  ii.  99. 

Elliot,  Granville,  i.  489. 

Ely,  Marchioness  of,  ii.  489. 

Emanuel,  Victor,  ii.  503. 

Emerson,  ii.  522,  531. 

Emma,  Queen  of  Sandwich  Islands,  ii. 
304- 

Eotvos,  Baron  Joseph,  ii.  52. 
Erskine,  Rev.  Thomas,  of  Linlathen, 
ii.  392. 

'  Essays  and  Reviews '  agitation,  ii. 

30  etseq.,  1 57,  1 8  7- 1 90,  334. 
Ewald,  Professor,  i.  329. 
Ewing,  Bishop  A.  (Argyll),  i.  484;  ii. 

198. 

Exeter,  Bishop  of,  i.  197. 
Exmouth,  Lord,  i.  467. 

Faber,  Frederick,  i.  123,  125,  133, 
170,  218. 

Farrar,  Archdeacon,  ii.  448,  569-571. 
Farrar,  Miss  Maud,  ii.  565. 
Fendall,  Rev.  James,  ii.  157. 
Fergusson,  Colonel,  ii.  389. 
Field,  Cyrus,  ii.  525,  526,  531. 
Findlay,  Mr.,  i.  447. 
Flood-Jones,  Rev.  S.,  ii.  298. 
Flower,  Lady,  ii.  492. 
Flower,  Sir  William,  ii.  492,  569. 
Forchhammer,  Professor,  i.  329. 
Forster,  John,  ii.  322. 


586 


INDEX 


Forster,  W.  E.,  ii.  486,  490,  572. 

Fox,  Captain,  i.  491. 

Fox,  Dr.  Wilson,  ii.  568. 

France,  tours  in,  i.  244;  ii.  336,  364. 

Francis  Joseph,  Emperor  (Austria), 

ii.  443. 
Franklin,  Sir  John,  i.  45. 
Fraser,  Bishop  (Manchester),  ii.  23, 

288. 

Frederick,   Emperor    and  Empress 

(Germany),  ii.  366,  405,  423,  434. 
Fremantle,  Mr.,  i.  447. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  i.  98;  ii.  285. 
Fry,  Elizabeth,  i.  252. 

Gambold,  ii.  243. 
Garbett,  Rev.  J.,  i.  305. 
Cell,  Rev.  J.  P.,  i.  321. 
Geneva,  ii.  413. 

Germany,  visits  to,  i.  219,  327;  ii.  336, 

404. 
Ghent,  i.  219. 

Gilbert,  A.   T.  (Vice-Chancellor  of 

Oxford),  i.  177. 
Giles,  John,  ii.  308. 
Gladstone,  Mr.,  Sen.  (of  Seaforth),  i. 

II. 

Gladstone,  Henry,  ii.  1 18. 

Gladstone,  Herbert,  ii.  1 18. 

Gladstone,  Right  Hon.  W.  E.,  i.  22; 
speeches  on  University  Reform,  i. 
420,  433;  on  Peel's  death,  i.  420; 
opinion  of  Stanley  as  Secretary  of 
Oxford  University  Commission,  i. 
43 1  ;  on  '  .Subscription,'  ii.  118;  Irish 
Church  Disestablishment,  ii.  263; 
with  Stanley  in  Rome,  ii.  356;  at 
Marlborough  House,  ii.  447. 

Glynne,  Sir  Stephen,  i.  148;  ii.  357. 

Goldwin  Smith,  Professor,  i.  421,  445. 

Goodwin,  C.  W.,  ii.  30. 

Gordon,  Osborne,  i.  172. 

Gorham  controversy,  i.  386,  416. 

Gortschakoff,  Prince,  ii.  426,  437. 

Goulburn,  Dean  E.  M.  (Norwich),  i. 
170,  250,  263,  272;  ii.  228,  289. 

Granada,  Archbishop  of,  ii.  486. 

Grant,  Lady  Lucy,  ii.  492. 

Granville,  Dr.,  i.  202. 

Gray,  Bishop  (Capetown) ,  ii.  1 90  et  seq. 


Greece,  visits  to,  i.  268. 

Green,  John  Richard,  ii.  13. 

Greenhill,  W.  A.,  i.  44,  loi,  117,  125. 

Greenhow,  Mr.,  i.  203. 

Greg,  Samuel,  ii.  501. 

Grevy,  Jules,  ii.  363. 

Grey,  Earl,  i.  142. 

Grote,  George,  ii.  317,  320. 

Grotsky,  Professor,  ii'.  442. 

Grove,  Sir  George,  i.  476,  480,  517; 
ii.  511,  533,  570. 

Guillemard,  H.  P.,  i.  340. 

Guizot,  M.,  i.  259,  338,  391,  493. 

Gurney,  Joseph  John  (the  Quaker- 
Pope),  i.  252. 

Gurney,  Russell,  ii.  510. 

Hadden,  Rev.  R.  H.,  ii.  501. 

Halle,  Dr.,  ii.  283. 

Hamilton,  \V.  K.,  i.  77. 

Hampden,  Bishop  (Hereford),  i.  154- 

164,  310,  347. 
Hansard,  Rev.  Septimus,  ii.  27. 
Hare,  Augustus,  i.  5,  88,  190. 
Hare,  Mrs.  Augustus,  i.  2,  32,  82,  165; 

ii.  106,  no,  135,  339,  401. 
Hare,  A.  J.  C,  ii.  165. 
Hare,  Archdeacon  Julius,  i.  108  et 

seq.,  218,  316;  ii.  42. 
Harper,  Dr.  Gerald,  ii.  511,  534,  545, 

550,  552,  568,  570. 
Harrison,   Archdeacon,  i.   429,  468, 

472.  535- 
Hassard,  Sir  John,  ii.  550. 
Hawkins,  Dr.  (Provost  of  Oriel),  i. 

369- 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  ii.  522. 
"Helen,  Grand  Duchess,  ii.  436. 
Hermann,  Professor,  i.  329. 
Herschel,  Sir  John,  ii.  317,  320. 
Heywood,  Mr.,  i.  419. 
Highton,  Henry,  i.  39,  188. 
Hill,  Sir  Rowland,  ii.  320. 
Hinds,  Bishop  (Norwich),  i.  414,  421, 
432- 

Hobhouse,  Bishop,  i.  341. 
Hodgkin,  Mr.,  ii.  508. 
Hohenlohe,  Princess,  ii.  350,  412. 
Hohl  (Stanley's  courier),  ii.  357. 
Holden,  Mr.,  i.  173. 


INDEX 


Holland,  Canon  Scott,  ii.  401. 
Holland,  Queen  of,  ii.  349. 
Holland,  Sir  Henry,  ii.  415. 
Holland,  visit  to,  ii.  349. 
Hook,  Dean  (Chichester),  ii.  289. 
Hopkins,  Bishop  (Vermont),  ii.  201- 
207. 

Horagch  (Stanley's  courier),  ii.  50. 
Hoskyns,  Rev.  Sir  John  L.,  i.  69. 
Houghton,  Lord,  i.  391,  489;  ii.  403. 
Howard,  Lord  Edward,  i.  425. 
Howe,  Lord,  ii.  528. 
Howley,  Archbishop,  i.  347. 
Hughes,  Thomas,  i.  68,  75 ;  ii.  28. 
Hugo,  Victor,  ii.  551. 
Hull,  Rev.  John,  i.  249,  312. 
Hull,  W.  W.,  ii.  227. 
Humphery,  George  R.,  ii.  310. 
Hungary,  ii.  51. 

Huntingdon,  Countess  of,  ii.  453. 
Hussey,  Rev.  Robert,  i.  498,  503. 
Hyacinthe,  Pere.    See  Loyson,  Pere 
Hyacinthe. 

Ianishoff,  ii.  429,  437. 

Imperial,  Prince,  i.  494;  ii.  324-330. 

Innocent,  Archbishop  (Moscow),  ii. 

430.  432. 
Ireland,  i.  146;  ii.  365. 
Irish  Church  Disestablishment,  ii.  264. 
Irving,  Washington,  ii.  525. 
Isabella,  Queen  of  Spain,  ii.  366. 
Isidore,  Archbishop  (St.  Petersburg), 

ii.  430. 

Italy,  tours  in,  i.  436;  ii.  131,  354. 
Ivan  the  Terrible,  i.  524. 

Jackson,  Bishop  (London) ,  ii.  291 , 37 1 . 
Jacobson,  Bishop  (Chester),  i.  389; 

ii.  96. 
Jacobson,  Mrs.,  ii.  96. 
James,  Mr.,  i.  257. 
Jelf,  Dr.,  i.  487. 

Jenkyns,  Dr.,  i.  122,  178,  297,  323. 
Jenner,  Sir  William,  ii.  568,  571. 
Jeune,  Bishop  (Peterborough),  i.  421, 
498. 

Jewish  Church,  Lectures  on,  ii.  108- 

115,  246-250,  481  et  seq. 
Joachim,  Patriarch,  ii.  53. 


Johnson,  Professor,  i.  256. 
Johnson,  Dean  G.  H.  S.  (Wells),  i. 
421. 

Jones,  Rev.  S.  Flood-,  ii.  298. 

Jowett,  Rev.  B.  (Master  of  Balliol), 
Fellow  of  Balliol,  i.  212;  tour  with 
Stanley  in  Germany,  i.  326,  346;  at 
Cuddesdon  with  Stanley,  i.  351;  on 
Stanley  as  a  preacher,  i.  368;  in 
Paris  with  Stanley,  i.  390;  his  Com- 
mentaries, i.  473-475;  on  Stanley's 
appointment  to  Chair  of  Ecclesiasti- 
cal History,  i.  500 ;  Endowment  of 
Greek  Professorship  :  Stanley's  sup- 
port, ii.  24,  133,  167,  332;  'Essays 
and  Reviews,'  ii.  30  et  seq. ;  advises 
Stanley  as  to  Eastern  tour,  ii.  65; 
on  Mrs.  Stanley's  death,  ii.  75,  97; 
letters  from  Stanley,  ii.  97,  100,  271, 
370;  on  Stanley's  appointment  to 
Deanery,  ii.  143;  on  Stanley's  Select 
Preachership,  ii.  227;  preaches  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  ii.  289;  Stan- 
ley's pall-bearer,  ii.  571. 

Keble,  Rev.  John,  i.  130,  48 1;  ii.  1 59. 
Keppel,  Captain,  ii.  67,  87. 
King,  Rev.  Bryan,  ii.  25. 
Kingsley,  Rev.  Charles,  ii.  I,  135,  297, 
319- 

Knapp,  Mr.,  ii.  513. 
Knight,  Professor,  ii.  463. 
KnoUys,  Sir  F.,  ii.  429. 

Lachmann,  i.  329. 

Lacordaire,  Abbe,  i.  397. 

Lake,  Dean  W.  C.  (Durham),  i.  47, 

87,  197,  212. 
Lamartine,  i.  404;  ii.  414. 
Lander,  W.  S.,  i.  118. 
Langalbalele,  ii.  290. 
Latouche,  Mrs.,  i.  47. 
Law,  Bishop  (Elphin),  ii.  244. 
Lawrence,  Lord,  ii.  320. 
Lear,  Edward,  i.  146;  ii.  475. 
Lebrun,  Madame,  ii.  336. 
Ledru-Rollin,  M.,  i.  400. 
Lees,  Dr.  Cameron,  ii.  508. 
Leighton,  Archbishop,  ii.  243,  275. 
Leonidas,  Bishop  (Moscow),  ii.  441. 


588 


INDEX 


Lepsius,  Dr.,  i.  216. 
Leroux,  M.,  i.  404. 

Leycester,  Miss  Catherine.  See  Stan- 
ley, Mrs.  Edward. 

Leycester,  Miss  Maria.  See  Hare, 
Mrs.  Augustus. 

Leycester,  Rev.  Oswald,  i.  3. 

Lichfield,  Dean  of,  ii.  499. 

Liddell,  Dean  H.  G.  (Christ  Church), 

i.  421,  49S;  ii.  135,  136,  142,  146, 
264,  266,  332,  470. 

Liddon,  Canon  (St.  Paul's),  ii.  165, 

171,  222,  288. 
Lightfoot,  Bishop  (Durham),  i.  475; 

ii.  39,  141. 
Linwood,  William,  i.  173. 
Liturgical  revision,  Petition  for,  i.  245 

et  seq. 

Liverpool,  Lord,  i.  467. 
Livingstone,  Dr.,  ii.  318,  320. 
Locker-Lampson,  Mr.,  ii.  283,  346, 

347.  566. 
Loftus,  Lord  Augustus,  ii.  426. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  ii.  518. 
Longley,  Archbishop,  ii.  197  et  seq., 

266. 

Lonsdale,  James,  i.  71,  125,  170. 
Lonsdale,  W.,  i.  188. 
Lowder,  Rev.  Charles,  ii.  26,  28. 
Loyson,  Pere  Hyacinthe,  ii.  369,  410 

et  seq.,  552. 
Lushington,  Dr.  (Dean  of  Arches),  ii. 

43.  105.  157.  227,  414. 
Lycurgus,  Archbishop  (Syros,  &c.),  ii. 

381. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  ii.  320. 
Lyons,  Sir  E.,  i.  365. 
Lyttelton,  Lady,  i.  148. 
Lytton,  Lord,  ii.  320. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  i.  489. 

Macleod,  Dr.  Norman,  i.  495;  ii.  392. 

Maclise,  D.,  ii.  321. 

Macready,  i.  204. 

Madrid,  ii.  4. 

Magee,  Archbishop  (York),  ii.  245. 
Marathon,  i.  276. 
Marriott,  C,  i.  123,  132,  1 70. 
Martineau,  Miss  H.,  i.  202,  205. 
Massie,  Edward,  i.  71,  133,  174. 


Maurice,  Rev.  F.  D.,  i.  229,  259,  261, 
485;  ii.  65,  105,  250,  288,  318. 

Meade,  Hon.  R.,  ii.  67,  73,  75,  87. 

Meath,  Lady,  i.  149. 

Melbourne,  Lord,  i.  155,  197. 

Melchizedek  of  Mount  Athos,  ii.  57, 

'  Memoir  of  Edward  and  Catherine 
Stanley,'  ii.  542. 

'  Memorials  of  Canterbury,'  i.  471. 

'  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey,' 
ii.  257-261. 

Meyer,  Dr.,  i.  491. 

Michelet,  i.  391,  392, 

Milan,  ii.  545. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  ii.  265,  364. 

Milman,  Dean  (St.  Paul's),  i,  441;  iL 

137.  365.  395- 
Milman,  H.,  i.  440. 
Milnes,  R.  M.    See  Houghton,  Lord. 
Milton,  John,  ii.  355. 
Minghetti,  ii.  549. 
Minter,  Dr.,  ii.  67,  87. 
Moberly,  Bishop  (Salisbury),  i.  69,  76, 

122,  127,  131;  ii.  288. 
Moffatt,  Dr.,  ii.  297. 
Mohamed  -  ibn  -  Hassan    of  Ghizeh 

(Stanley's  dragoman),  i.  448,  460; 

ii.  81. 

Mohl,  Madame,  ii.  1 30,  362,  366,  402, 
457,  464,  469,  484. 

Mole,  M.,  i.  393,  404. 

Moncrieff,  George,  ii.  391. 

Montgomery,  Bishop  Henry  (Tas- 
mania), ii.  543,  552,  565. 

Montreal,  ii.  527. 

Moor,  Rev.  Mr.,  i.  50,  62,  104. 

Moore,  Noel,  ii.  87. 

Morgan,  Sir  G.  Osborne,  ii.  504. 

Moriarty,  Bishop,  ii.  244. 

Morier,  Sir  Robert,  i.  391;  ii.  485. 

Moscow,  i.  517,  520;  ii.  438-442. 

Motley,  J.  L.,  ii.  474,  509. 

Mouravieff,  Andrew,  i.  523,  531. 

Mouravieff,  General,  i.  518. 

Miiller,  Professor  Max,  i.  466;  ii.  24, 
261,  291,  296, 331,  333, 462, 464,  501. 

Munich,  ii.  406. 

Nardi,  Monsignor,  ii.  357. 
Nares,  Professor,  i.  303. 


INDEX 


589 


Naples,  i.  280. 

Neander,  A.,  i.  331. 

Newcastle,  Duke  of,  ii.  334. 

Newcastle,  visit  to,  i.  202. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  i.  98;  Fellow  of 
Oriel,  i.  133;  'Tracts  for  the 
Times,'  i.  134;  on  the  Hampden 
controversy,  i.  155;  '  Elucidation 
of  Hampden's  Theological  State- 
ments,' i.  157;  'Tract  No.  90,'  i. 
291  ei  seq. ;  secedes  to  Rome,  i, 
343;  'Development  of  Christian 
Doctrine,'  i.  345;  interview  with 
Stanley :  opinion  of  Pusey,  ii.  340- 
342. 

Niagara,  ii.  526. 

NicEea,  Bishop  of,  ii.  54. 

Nicon,  Patriarch,  i.  530. 

Niebuhr,  i.  153. 

Nitzsch,  Professor,  i.  221. 

Nonconformists  and  University  privi- 
leges, i.  107,  143,  435. 

Northumberland,  Algernon,  Duke  of, 
ii.  320. 

Nuremberg,  i.  327. 

Ober  Ammergau,  ii.  45. 

Oncken,  Missionary,  ii.  449. 

Oranmore,  Lord,  ii.  269. 

Orloff,  Prince,  i.  493. 

Osborne,  Lady  Emma,  ii.  426,  437. 

Osborne,  visit  to,  ii.  127. 

Owen,  Mr.,  ii.  553. 

Oxford  University  Commission,  i.  421, 
431- 

Palestine,  visits  to,  i.  453;  ii.  79-91. 
Palgrave,  Sir  F.,  i.  391. 
Palmer,  William,  i.  97. 
Palmerston,  Lord,  i.  498;  ii.  139,  320, 
353- 

Paradol,  Prevost,  ii.  276,  366. 
Paris,  i.  244,  391,  402;  ii.  402. 
Parry,  Lady,  i.  15. 
Parry,  Sir  Edward,  i.  15,  19,  45. 
Pasley,  Sir  T.,  i.  loi. 
Pattison,  Rev.  Mark,  ii.  30. 
Peabody,  George,  ii.  320. 
Pearson,  Canon  Hugh,  i.  218,  280, 
301,  309,  422,  500;  ii.  45, 133, 137; 


extracts  from  Stanley's  letters  to,  ii. 
I,  49,  60,  145,  150,  332,  382,  406, 
409,  467;  Stanley's  illness  and  death, 
ii.  571. 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  i.  346,  420. 
Penrhyn,  Miss  E.,  i.  109,  436. 
Penrhyn,  Leycester,  ii.  73. 
Penrose,  John,  i.  121,  312. 
Percy,  Lord  Henry,  ii.  320. 
Persia,  Shah  of,  ii.  305. 
Pesth,  ii.  5. 

Peter  the  Great,  i.  516. 
Peto,  Sir  M.,  ii.  504. 
Philaret,  Archbishop,  i.  527,  528. 
Phillimore,  Sir  R.,  i.  149;  ii.  125. 
Pinder,  Rev.  North,  ii.  4. 
Pius  IX.,  Pope,  ii.  358,  359,  384,  407, 
503- 

Pobedonestcheff,  M.,  ii.  442. 
Pollock,  Sir  George,  ii.  320. 
Portugal,  tour  in,  ii.  482. 
Potsdam,  ii.  404. 

Powell,  Professor  Baden-,  i.  421;  ii. 

30  et  seq. 
Power,  Captain,  ii.  67. 
Price,  Bonamy,  i.  84,  121,  134,  312, 

316. 

Proudhon,  M.,  i.  204. 
Public  Worship   Regulation  Act,  ii. 
212. 

Pusey,  Dr.  E.  B.,  i.  123;  'Dr.  Hamp- 
den's Theological  Statements  and 
39  Articles  compared,'  i.  157,  158; 
resumes  preaching  at  Oxford,  i. 
344;  correspondence  with  Stanley, 
i.  508;  ii.  152,  159;  his  letter  at- 
tacking Stanley,  ii.  13;  opposes 
Kingsley,  ii.  135;  interview  with 
Stanley,  ii.  152;  'Eirenicon,'  ii. 
171 ;  Pius  IX. 's  opinion  of,  ii.  358; 
his  visit  to  Paris,  ii.  360;  on  Tem- 
ple's appointment  to  Exeter,  ii.  371. 

Quebec,  ii.  527. 

Rachel  as  Lucrece,  i.  393. 
Ramsay,  Dean,  ii.  395. 
Rawson,  Rev.  Mr.,  i.  10,  34,  43. 
Reichel,  Bishop  (Meath),  ii.  297. 
Reinkens,  Professor,  ii.  410, 


590 


INDEX 


Reynolds,  Rev.  H.,  i.  158. 
Rice,  Governor   (Massachusetts),  ii. 
518. 

Rigg,  Dr.,  ii.  490. 

Riley,  Athelstan,  ii.  58. 

Robbins,  Mr.,  i.  480. 

Robertson,  Mr.  (editor  of  '  London 

and  Westminster  Review  '),  i.  202. 
Rollin,  M.  Ledru,  i.  400. 
Rome,  visits  to,  i.  436;  ii.  356,  406, 

423- 

Rose,  Rev.  E.,  i.  35. 
Rowsell,  Canon  J.,  ii.  288. 
Rugby,  Stanley  at,  i.  53-105. 
Russell,  Dr.,  i.  175,  177. 
Russell,  Earl,  ii.  509. 
Russell,  Lady,  ii.  469. 
Russell,  Lord  Arthur,  ii.  492. 
Russell,  Lord  John,  i.  414,  419,  440. 
Russell,  Lord  Odo,  ii.  423. 
Russia,  visits  to,  i.  515;  ii.  438. 
Rutherford,  Rev.  Samuel,  ii.  272. 

St.  Andrews,  ii.  458. 

St.  Petersburg,  i.  5,  6;  ii.  422-434. 

Sack,  Professor,  i.  257. 

Sandringham,  ii.  125. 

Savary,  Mr.,  i.  27. 

Scharf,  George,  ii.  286. 

Scherer,  M.,  ii.  363. 

Schultze,  Professor,  ii.  409. 

Scott,  Mr.  (tutor  of  Balliol),  i.  175. 

Scott,  Sir  Gilbert,  ii.  286,  509. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  ii.  384  et  seq.,  460. 

Scotland,  ii.  382. 

Sedgwick,    Professor,  i.   252,   391  ; 
ii.  415. 

Selborne,  Earl,  i.  77,  123,  131. 
Senior,  Nassau,  i.  158,  391. 
.Shaftesbury,  Lord,  ii.  399,  474. 
Shah  of  Persia,  ii.  305. 
Shairp,  Principal  J.  C,  i.  347,  437; 

ii.  2,  9,  100,  155,  239,  340,  392, 

461,  507. 
Sheriff,  Lawrence,  i.  49,  62,  122. 
Shuttleworth,    Bishop  (Chichester), 

i.  131. 

Simpkinson,  Rev.  J.  N.,  i.  68,  316; 

ii.  126,  361. 

*  Sinai  and  Palestine,'  i.  472  et  seq. 


Sinai,  visit  to,  i.  451. 

Smith,  Professor  Goldwin,  i.  421,  445. 

Smith,  Dr.  Vance,  ii.  216,  221,  382. 

Smith,  Right  Hon.  W.  H.,  ii.  265,  572. 

Spain,  visit  to,  ii.  4. 

Spottiswoode,  G.  A.,  ii.  571. 

Spry,  Dean  (Canterbury),  i.  429,  467. 

Stanley,  Baron  (Sir  Thomas,  of  Lathom 
and  Knowsley),  i.  I. 

Stanley,  Arthur  Penrhyn  — 

1815-1828.  Ancestry,  i.  I ;  parent- 
age; i-  3;  birth,  i.  8;  childhood, 
i.  9;  school  at  Seaforth,  i.  10-21 ; 
early  habit  of  letter-writing,  i.  1 1 ; 
Southey  his  favourite  poet,  i.  12; 
gifts  as  a  raconteur,  ib. ;  boyish 
poems,  i.  14,  16-19,  34i  3^; 
meets  W.  E.  Gladstone,  i.  22; 
tour  in  the  Pyrenees,  i.  23  et  seq.  ; 
extracts  from  Diary  —  Liverpool 
to  Dublin  and  Bordeaux,  i.  27-29; 
adventures  with  sheep-dog,  i.  30; 
Port  de  Venasque  and  the  Mala- 
detta,  i.  31,  32 ;  his  Pyrenean 
sketch,  i.  35. 
1829.  Rugby,  i.  37-52;  H.  G. 
Allen's  reminiscences :  his  nick- 
name '  Nancy,'  i.  41 ;  '  directions ' 
to  his  mother  and  sister,  i.  42; 
Wombwell's  menagerie,  i.  46 ; 
his  fags:  made  prjepostor,  i.  49; 
poem  on  Brownsover,  ib. 
1830-1834.  Life  at  Rugby,  i.  53- 
105  ;  prize  compositions,  i.  52, 
54,  55,  63,  64;  his  distaste  for 
games,  i.  57;  shyness  and  re- 
serve, i.  57,  61;  horsemanship, 
i.  59;  hatred  of  mathematics,  i. 
59,  171 ;  sixth  form,  i.  63;  first 
speech  day,  i.  66;  President  of 
Debating  Society,  i.  67,  92;  Mr. 
Simpkinson's  and  Sir  John  Hos- 
kyns'  reminiscences,  i.  68-70; 
scholar  of  Balliol,  i.  70;  prizes 
and  last  speech  day,  i.  73  ;  school 
exhibitioner,  i.  76;  farewell  to 
Arnold  and  Rugby,  i.  77  ;  his 
Rugby  letters,  i.  78;  devotion  to 
Arnold,  i.  78,  94-98,  102;  his 
brother,  Owen,  i.  80;  his  self- 


INDEX 


reproaches,  i.  82,  88;  his  brother 
Charles,  i.  84 ;  intimacy  with 
Vaughan  and  Lake,  i.  87;  cour- 
age and  combativencss,  i.  89; 
literary  tastes,  i.  90;  on  trans- 
portation, i.  92;  on  Mosaic  cos- 
mogony, i.  93;  the  Church  and 
thirty-nine  Articles,  i.  94 ;  Ar- 
nold's sermons  and  influence,  i. 
95  et  seq.;  Arnold's  orthodoxy,  i. 
97;  Arnold's  visit  to  the  Stanleys, 
i.  99-101  ;  Vaughan's  remini- 
scences, i.  103  ;  at  Hurstmon- 
ceux,  i.  106-118;  Dissenters'  Bill, 
i.  107;  Rev.  J.  Sterling,  i.  109 
et  seq. ;  Hurstmonceux  Rectory, 
i.  109,  113;  Coleridge's  '  Letters  i 
on  Inspiration,'  i.  in,  114;  Ten-  [ 
nyson's  poems,  i.  113;  Sterling's  [ 
sermons,  i.  114;  on  Nonconform- 
ists, i.  115;  on  Unitarians,  i.  1 16; 
record  of  work  done,  i.  117  ; 
genealogy  of  Hare  family,  ib.  ; 
W.  S.  Landor,  i.  118;  revisits 
Rugby,  i.  120;  first  term  at  Balliol, 
i.  121-137;  first  day  at  Oxford, 
i.  122;  Pusey's  sermon,  i.  123; 
different  sets  at  Oxford,  i.  124; 
his  associates,  i.  125  ;  lectures, 
i.  126;  on  Apostolical  succession, 
i.  129,  142;  Keble,  W.  G.  Ward, 
i.  130;  debates  at  the  Union,  i. 
132  ;  '  Tracts  for  the  Times,' 
i.  134;  Newman  and  Arnold: 
Newman's  preaching,  i.  134,  135; 
visits  Cambridge,  i.  135;  Thirl- 
wall,  Whewell,  &c.,  i.  136. 
1834-1837.  At  Balliol,  i.  138;  con- 
tributes to  '  Rugby  Magazine,' 
i.  139;  Arnold's  political  opin- 
ions, i.  141 ;  the  Question  of 
Tests,  i.  143;  the  'Declaration,' 
i.  144-146;  visits  Dublin,  Glen- 
dalough,  and  the  Seven  Churches, 
i.  146;  assists  father  in  '  Observa- 
tions on  Religion  and  Education 
in  Ireland,'  i.  147;  visits  Sir 
S.  Glynne  at  Hawarden  Castle, 
i.  148;  views  on  conflict  of  Sci- 
ence with  Scripture,  i.  149;  on 


verbal  inspiration,  i.  150  ;  on 
Irish  Church,  i.  151  ;  on  poperj", 
i.  152;  on  Niebuhr,  i.  153;  on 
Evangelicism  and  Catholicism, 
ib.;  Hampden  controversy, i.  155, 
164;  consulted  by  Prime  Minister 
as  to  Hampden's  appointment, 
i.  156;  scene  at  Hampden's  in- 
augural lecture,  i.  161 ;  remarks 
on  Newman  and  Pusey,  i.  162; 
on  Arnold,  i.  162,  164;  at  Baden, 
i.  165  ;  his  opinion  of  Ward, 
i.  168;  his  Oxford  friends,  i.  169; 
his  university  distinctions,  i.  171; 
wins  '  Ireland '  after  third  at- 
tempt :  examiner's  mistake  and 
apology,  i.  172-177  ;  interview 
with  Keble,  i.  178;  Commemo- 
ration :  recital  of  his  '  Newdi- 
gate  '  poem, '  The  Gipsies,' i.  179; 
his  father's  consecration  as  Bishop 
of  Norwich  and  installation  ser- 
mon, i.  181-186 ;  remarks  on 
Norwich,  i.  185;  paper  on  Chris- 
tian Unity  and  unchristian  Schism, 
i.  187;  first  class  in  'greats,'  i.  188. 
1837-1839.  Balliol  fellowship,  i. 
190;  attraction  of  Newmanism,  i. 
192,  195,  196;  on  sects,  i.  193;  on 
penance,  i.  194;  sympathy  with 
Tractarians,  ib.;  present  at  House 
of  Lords  debate,  i.  197;  Univer- 
sity College  fellowship,  ib. ;  Queen's 
coronation,  i.  199;  elected  Fellow 
of  University  College,  i.  201 ;  visits 
Newcastle,  i.  202;  guest  in  a  Uni- 
tarian household :  Mr.  Robert- 
son, Miss  Martineau,  and  Ma- 
cready,  i.  203  et  seq.;  Bishop  of 
Durham  incident,  i.  206;  Eugene 
Aram's  skull,  i.  207;  at  a  Newcas- 
tle ball,  i.  208;  effect  on  him  of 
Newcastle  visit,  i.  209 ;  visits  Rug- 
by :  opposite  views  of  Arnold  and 
Newman,  i.  210;  distress  at  leaving 
Balliol,  i.  211;  wins  Chancellor's 
Latin  Essay,  i.  214,  217;  prob- 
lem of  subscription  to  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  i.  215,  244;  ii.  116;  Car- 
lyle's  lectures,  i.  216;  Lady  Parry's 


592 


INDEX 


death,  ib. ;  at  Hurstmonceux,  i. 
218;  foreign  tour,  i.  218-223; 
Bruges,  Ghent,  and  Bonn,  i.  219, 
220;  the  Bonn  professors,  i.  221; 
German  students'  duels,  i.  222; 
life  at  Bonn,  i.  223;  his  share  in 
Tait's  pamphlet  on  '  Professorial 
System  at  Oxford,'  i.  224,  230; 
Athanasian  Creed,  i.  225,  232;  ex- 
amined for  Holy  Orders  :  interview 
with  Archdeacon  Gierke,  i.  227; 
ordained,  i.  229. 

1 840-  184 1.  Formation  of  his  char- 
acter, i.  234;  literary  gifts  and 
mental  habits,  i.  237;  influence  of 
Rugby  and  Arnold,  i.  238,  239; 
his  sympathy,  i.  240;  moods  of 
indecision,  i.  241;  toleration,  i. 
242;  his  first  sermon  at  Norwich, 
i.  243;  essay  on  'Justification  by 
Faith,'  ib. ;  his  views  on  Petition 
for  Liturgical  Revision,  i.  245  et 
seq.  ;  life  at  Norwich,  i.  252;  his 
love  of  travelling,  i.  253;  foreign 
tour,  i.  256-289;  Bruges  to  Berne, 
i.  256,  257;  Grand  Duchess  Ste- 
phanie at  Freiburg,  i.  258;  Bun- 
sen  and  his  guests,  i.  259;  anec- 
dotes of  Talleyrand :  Thiers  and 
Guizot,  i.  260 ;  impressions  of  Al- 
pine scenery,  i.  261-263;  °f  Ven- 
ice, i.  264-267;  of  Corfu,  i.  267; 
his  '  new  garment,'  i.  268;  the 
charm  of  Greece,  i.  269-272; 
Delphi,  i.  272;  Athens,  i.  274; 
Marathon,  i.  276;  Olympia,  i. 
277;  quarantine  at  Malta,  i.  279; 
Naples,  i.  280;  Greece  and  Italy 
compared,  i.  282;  Amalfi,  i.  283; 
Palermo,  i.  284;  first  impressions 
of  Rome,  i.  285;  the  Pope,  i. 
286;  Holy  Week  in  Rome,  i.  287. 

1841-  1844.  Prorogation  of  Parlia- 
ment, i.  290;  'Tract  No.  90': 
'  Protest  of  the  Four  Tutors,'  i.  292 
ei  seq.  ;  his  opinion  of  Ward,  i. 
297;  breakfast-party  at  Rogers', 
i.  298 ;  his  study  of  Dante,  i. 
299;  on  Pearson's  ordination,  i. 
301 ;  Arnold  and  the  Chair  of 


Modern  History,  Oxford,  i.  304, 
306  eiseq.  ;  bishopric  of  Jerusalem, 
i.  305 ;  his  work  as  College  lec- 
turer, i.  309;  second  Hampden 
agitation,  i.  310;  Arnold's  death,  i. 
311-314;  refuses  headmastership 
of  Rugby,  i.  315;  remarks  on 
Tait's  appointment,  i.  317;  his 
sermon  on  Arnold's  death,  i.  318; 
'Memoir'  of  Arnold,  i.  319-324; 
visits  Paris :  description  of  Ver- 
sailles, i.  322. 
1 844- 1 848.  Resumes  study  of  He- 
brew, i.  325 ;  his  Latin  sermon 
on  '  offensive  truths,'  ib. ;  German 
tour,  i.  326-331;  'Holy  Coat'  at 
Treves,  i.  326;  Nuremberg,  Prague, 
i.  327;  Dresden,  i.  328;  Wittem- 
berg,  Berlin,  i.  330;  Ward's  '  Ideal 
Church,'  i.  332  et  seq. ;  the  'Three 
Resolutions,'  i.  334;  '  Nemesis  '  — 
his  address  to  voters  at  Convoca- 
tion, i.  337;  Bishop  Hobhouse's 
anecdote,  i.  341 ;  Newman  secedes 
to  Rome,  i.  343;  Pusey  resumes 
preaching  at  Oxford,  i.  344;  New- 
man's Essay  '  On  the  Development 
of  Christian  Doctrine,'  i.  345;  on 
Peel's  speech,  i.  346;  third  Hamp- 
den agitation,  i.  347;  his  mis- 
directed letters  to  Bishops  of  St. 
David's  and  Oxford,  i.  350,  351; 
his  growing  influence,  i.  353;  ef- 
forts to  improve  the  college,  i. 
354;  work  as  tutor,  i.  355;  Mr. 
Butler's  reminiscences,  i.  358;  his 
lectures,  i.  359;  intercourse  with 
his  pupils,  i.  360;  on  University 
expenses,  i.  363;  his  college  ser- 
mons, i.  365;  'Select  Preacher,' 
i.  366;  Jowett's  assistance,  i.  367; 
sermons  on  Apostolical  Age,  i. 
367,  387;  ApoUos  not  canonised, 
i.  368;  Oxford  in  1846,  i.  371;  on 
German  theologians,  i.  373;  his 
orthodoxy  suspected,  i.  374,  387- 
389;  his  ideal  of  religion,  i.  376; 
plea  for  free  inquiry,  i.  378;  Ar- 
nold's influence,  i.  381 ;  on  Church 
and  State,  i.  384,  385 ;  in  Paris : 


INDEX 


593 


effects  of  the  French  Revolution 
described,  i.  391;  Rachel  as  Lu- 
crece,  i.  393;  the  'Clubs,'  i.  394; 
Abbe  Lacordaire  in  Notre  Dame, 
i.  397 ;  Provisional  Government, 
i.  399-402;  the  P'ete  of  Frater- 
nisation, i.  399 ;  the  Boulogne 
abattoir,  i.  402 ;  second  visit  to 
Paris,  ib. ;  Lamartine  in  the  As- 
sembly, i.  404;  on  \l.  H.  Vaughan 
and  Chair  of  Modern  History,  i. 
407,  408. 

1849-1852.  His  father's  death  and 
funeral,  i.  410,  41 1,  413;  memoir, 
i.  412;  refuses  deanery  of  Car- 
lisle, i.  414;  death  of  his  brothers, 
i.  415;  articles  in  'Quarterly  Re- 
Vievy '  on  Grote's  '  History  of 
Greece,'  i.  416;  in  'Edinburgh 
Review,'  on  Gorham  controversy, 
i.  417;  writes  Lord  John  Russell 
on  University  Reform,  i.  419  ; 
present  at  University  Reform 
debate  in  House  of  Commons, 
i.  420;  his  sister  Catherine  mar- 
ries Vaughan,  i.  421 ;  secretary 
to  Oxford  University  Commission, 
i.  421,  431;  describes  opening  of 
Great  Exhibition,  i.  423  ;  ap- 
pointed Canon  of  Canterbury, 
i.  426;  letter  from  undergradu- 
ates, i.  427;  advantages  of  Can- 
terbury over  London  and  Oxford, 
i.  428,  429  ;  Carlyle's  advice, 
i.  430;  Report  of  Oxford  Uni- 
versity Commission :  Gladstone's 
speech,  i.  432-435. 

1852-1853.  At  Rome,  i.  436  ; 
vigour  of  the  Papacy,  i.  437 ; 
Duke  of  Wellington's  death  and 
funeral,  i.  438,  439;  on  the  great 
funerals  of  history,  i.  443  ;  in 
Paris  at  proclamation  of  Second 
Empire,  i.  444  ;  Eastern  tour, 
i.  445-464;  his  sister  Mary  con- 
templates secession  to  Rome, 
i.  445;  Egypt  anil  the  Nile,  i.  446; 
his  dragoman,  Mohamed,  i.  448, 
460 ;  his  camel,  i.  449;  the  Desert, 
ib. ;  Robinson's  '  Researches  in 
VOL.  H 


Palestine,'  i.  450;  Mount  Sinai  : 
Convent  of  St.  Catherine,  i.  451; 
the  Mount  Carmel  incident,  ib.; 
Hebron,  i.  452;  certainty  of  Pal- 
estine topography,  i.  453;  char- 
acteristics of  Palestine,  i.  454; 
scenes  of  the  Parables,  i.  456; 
Church  of  Holy  Sepulchre  on 
Greek  Easter  Eve,  i.  457-459; 
Smyrna,  Ephesus,  Constantinople, 
i.  461;  Nicaea  (or  Isnik),  i.  462; 
interview  with  Lord  Stratford  de 
Redcliffe,  i.  463. 

1853-1856.  Return  to  England: 
remarks  on  his  tour,  i.  465 ;  life 
at  Canterbury,  i.  466,  469;  his 
brother  canons,  i.  467 ;  his  sister 
Mary  secedes  to  Rome,  i.  470, 
493;  death  of  Sarah  Burgess: 
Ellen  Allen,  i.  470;  'Memorials 
of  Canterbury,'  i.  471;  'Murder 
of  Becket '  in  '  Quarterly  Review,' 
i.  472  ;  commentary  on  Corin- 
thians :  '  Sinai  and  Palestine,' 
i.  472  el  seq.  ;  Lightfoot's  criti- 
cism, i.  476;  reviews  on  his  and 
Jowett's  commentary,  i.  477;  cor- 
respondence with  Keble,  i.  481- 
484;  letter  from  Bishop  of  Argyll, 
i.  484;  F.  D.  Maurice  and  King's 
College,  i.  485 ;  views  on  eternal 
punishment,  i.  486;  on  Macaulay's 
conversational  powers,  i.  488; 
Crimean  War  :  Miss  Stanley's 
hospital  nurses,  i.  489-492  ;  in 
Paris:  breakfast  with  De  Saulcy, 
i.  493;  birth  of  Prince  Imperial, 
i.  494;  expeditions  in  England, 
Wales,  and  Scotland,  i.  494,  495; 
meets  Campbell  and  Norman 
M'Leod,  i.  495;  on  Tait's  ap- 
pointment to  bishopric  of  Lon- 
don and  Cotton's  consecration 
sermon,  i.  496,  497. 

1 856-1 858.  Regius  Professor  of 
Ecclesiastical  History,  i.  498; 
reception  at  Oxford,  i.  499;  op- 
portunities of  influence,  i.  501 ; 
choice  of  subject,  i.  501,  502; 
work  as  Bishop  of  London's  Ex- 

QQ 


594 


INDEX 


amining  Chaplain,  i.  502;  three 
introductory  lectures  on  Ecclesi- 
astical History,  i.  503;  Bunyan, 
the  '  Burns  of  England,'  i.  504; 
spirit  of  his  lectures,  i.  505-507; 
advises  study  of  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory, i.  507;  correspondence  with 
Pusey,  i.  508,  510;  foreign  tour, 
i.  511-534;  Sweden:  the  stock  of 
Stockholm,  i.  51 1 ;  Sunday  service 
at  Lecksand,  Dalecarlia,  i.  512; 
first  droshky  drive,  i.  515  ;  St. 
Petersburg,  i.  516;  Peter  the 
Great,  ib.;  Moscow,  i.  517,  520; 
Greek  Church  history,  i.  517; 
interest  in  the  Russian  Church, 
i.  519;  Troitzka  Monastery,  Ser- 
gius,  Prior  Antony,  i.  521;  the 
Kremlin,  i.  523  et  seq.;  Church 
of  St.  Basil,  i.  524;  Cathedral  of 
the  Assumption  :  the  Festival  and 
Coronation  Service,  i.  525  ei  seq.; 
Archbishop  Philaret,  i.  527-529; 
Ivan  the  Terrible  :  Patriarch 
Nicon  and  his  New  Jerusalem, 
i.  530;  Michael  Sutakin,  i.  531 ; 
writes  De  Circourt  on  Russia, 
i.  533;  Emperor  Nicholas'  coffin, 

i.  534;  last  residence  at  Canter- 
bury, i.  535 ;  installed  as  Canon 
of  Christ  Church,  i.  536. 

1858-1862.  Writes  to  Kingsley  on 
Canterbury,  ii.  I;  his  sermon  on 
Canon  Chesshrye's  death,  ib.  ; 
writes  to  Shairp  on  his  Oxford 
life,  ii.  2;  the  Long  Vacation, 

ii.  3  ;  tour  in  Spain,  ii.  4-8 ; 
Madrid,  ii.  4;  the  bull  fight,  ii.  5; 
Toledo,  Burgos,  Cardena,  and  the 
Cid,  ii.  5-8;  writes  to  Shairp  on 
'  Canterbury  Sermons,'  ii.  9,  10; 
his  influence  at  Oxford,  ii.  1 1 ; 
Butler's  anecdote,  ii.  12;  his  in- 
fluence as  a  preacher  :  J.  R. 
Green's  testimony,  ii.  13;  his 
interest  in,  and  advice  to,  his 
pupils,  ii.  15-20;  on  Athanasian 
Creed,  ii.  16;  on  interpretation 
of  Bible,  ii.  17;  the  best  book  on 
the  Sacrament,  ii.  18;  his  genius 


for  friendship,  ii.  20;  breadth  o." 
sympathy,  ii.  23;  pamphlet  o» 
Jowett's  works,  ii.  24 ;  endow- 
ment of  Greek  Professorship,  ii. 
24,  133,  167,  332;  Max  MuUer 
and  Sanskrit  Professorship,  ii.  24; 
Bryan  King  and  St.  George's-in- 
the-East :  Septimus  Hansard,  ii. 
25-30  ;  '  Elssays  and  Reviews ' 
agitation,  ii.  30-44,  49;  on  credi- 
bility of  miracles,  ii.  31;  his  arti- 
cles in '  Edinburgh  Review,'  ii.  33, 
34,  41 ;  correspondence  with  Tail, 
ii.  37;  attacked  by  '  Saturday  Re- 
view,' ii.  41,  49;  views  on  the 
'  Episcopal  Letter,'  ii.  42;  Ober 
Ammergau  play,  ii.  45;  Danish 
tour :  Helsingor  (Elsinore)  and 
Hamlet,  ib.;  his  'Eastern  Church,' 
ii.  47;  Hungary  to  Constanti- 
nople, ii.  48-60;  discomforts  of 
the  Kesmarck  expedition,  ii.  49, 
50;  Pesth,  ii.  51;  present  at  the 
dissolution  of  Hungarian  Diet : 
Deak,  ii.  52;  interview  with  Patri- 
arch Joachim,  ii.  53 ;  Mount 
Athos :  Melchizedek  :  the  monks, 
ii.  55-60;  Prince  Consort's  death, 
ii.  60;  his  account  of  the  illness: 
attends  funeral,  ii.  61 ;  invited  to 
accompany  Prince  of  Wales  to 
Palestine,  ii.  63;  interview  with 
General  Bruce,  ii.  63,  64;  decides 
to  go,  ii.  65;  Eastern  tour  with 
Prince,  ii.  66-91;  his  servant 
Waters,  ii.  66;  his  companions, 
ii.  67;  Cairo  and  the  Pyramids, 
ii.  68;  the  Nile,  ii.  69;  his  moth- 
er's illness :  the  Queen's  sympa- 
thy, ii.  70 ;  Karnak,  Dendera, 
ii.  71;  his  mother's  death,  ii,  72 
el  seq.;  his  intense  grief,  ii.  71, 
96,  97 ;  letters  of  condolence : 
Jowett's  sympathy,  ii.  75;  sermoa 
on  'Fragments,'  ii.  78;  decides 
to  continue  tour,  ii.  79;  Holy 
Land,  ib.;  Mosque  of  Hebron, 
ii.  81;  Samaritan  Passover  at 
Mount  Gerizim,  ii.  83;  Easter  at 
Lake  Tiberias,  ii.  85;  Kadesh- 


INDEX 


595 


Naphtali,  ii.  86;  tent-life,  ii.  87; 
cedars  of  Lebanon,  ii.  89. 
J  863.  General  Bruce's  illness, 
death,  and  funeral,  ii.  92-94; 
rumours  of  preferment,  ii.  98; 
onColenso's  '  Pentateuch,'  ii.  100; 
correspondence  with  Colenso,  ii. 
101-104;  his  appeal  to  Maurice 
and  Colenso,  ii.  105 ;  '  The  Bible : 
its  Form  and  its  Substance,'  ii.  107 ; 
'  Lectures  on  Jewish  Church,'  Part 
I.,  ii.  108-115;  Gladstone  and  the 
question  of  Subscription,  ii.  118; 
Herbert  and  Henry  Gladstone, 
ib. ;  '  Letter  to  Bishop  of  London 
on  Subscription,'  ii.  119;  his  re- 
lations with  the  Royal  Family, 
ii.  121 ;  'Sermons  in  the  East,' 
ii.  122;  at  Windsor  on  Anniver- 
sary  of  Prince  Consort's  death, 
ii.  123;  memorial  service  at  Frog- 
more,  ii.  124;  Easter  at  .Sand- 
ringham,  ii.  125  ;  Princess  of 
Wales,  ii.  127;  at  Osborne:  the 
Queen's  account  of  her  accession, 
ii.  127;  Princess  Beatrice,  ii.  127, 
128;  Lady  Augusta  Bruce,  ii.  130; 
tour  in  Italy,  ii.  131 ;  Tail's  ad- 
vice on  Dublin  Archbishopric, 
id.;  Jowett  prosecuted  for  her- 
esy: sermon  on  Human  Corrup- 
tion, ii.  134;  rules  to  abate  evils 
of  controversy,  ii.  135;  Kingsley's 
D.C.L.  degree,  id.;  Dr.  Liddell's 
belated  letter,  ii.  136,  332;  visit 
to  Canosa,  ii.  137;  engaged  to 
Lady  Augusta  Bruce,  and  accepts 
Deanery  of  Westminster,  ii.  139; 
his  friends'  congratulations  — 
Liddell,  Jowett,  and  Donkin, 
ii.  140-144;  regrets  for  Oxford, 
ii.  144,  33^-333;  ^^'S  farewell  ser- 
mon—  'Great  Opportunities,'  ii. 
145-147;  Lady  Augusta's  sympa- 
thy and  help,  ii.  148,345,347;  Lord 
Elgin's  death,  ii.  1 50 ;  Wordsworth's 
protest,  ii.  151,  333;  his  first  ser- 
mon as  Dean,  ii.  151, 156;  Letter  to 
Pusey  on  Jowett,  ii.  152;  marriage, 
and  installation  as  Dean,  ii.  154. 


1864-1874.  Privy  Council's  judg- 
ment on  '  Essays  and  Reviews,' 
ii.  157;  Special  Services  in  the 
Abbey  :  correspondence  with 
Keble,  ii.  159  —  Pusey,  160-165 
—  and  Liddon,  165-172;  his 
opinion  of  the  '  Record,'  ii.  162; 
views  on  Church  and  State,  ii.  174, 
175,  183,  261-263;  his  view  of 
the  Christian  Church :  his  aims 
and  opinions,  ii.  176  ei  seq.,  241 ; 
'  Essays  on  Church  and  State,' 
ii.  185;  attacks  Synodical  con- 
demnation of  '  Essays  and  Re- 
views,' ii.  187-190;  South  African 
controversy  —  Gray  and  Colenso, 
ii.  191 ;  his  support  of  Colenso  in 
Convocation,  ii.  \')3el  seq.;  advice 
to  Colenso,  ii.  195;  refuses  Abbey 
to  Pan-Anglican  -Synod,  ii.  198; 
correspondence  with  Bishop  Hop- 
kins, ii.  202-207;  Dr.  P.  Brooks' 
indignation,  ii.  207;  his  views  on 
Ritualism  {Jolerabiles  uieptiai), 
ii.  208-211 ;  on  'Bennett  Judg- 
ment,' ii.  212;  on  Public  Worship 
Registration  Act,  ii.  212,  213; 
'  delenda  est  Convocatio,'  ii.  214; 
Revisers  of  Authorised  Version 
and  the  Abbey,  ii.  216  et  seq.;  his 
views  on  Athanasian  Creed  con- 
troversy and  the  '  Explanatory 
Note,'  ii.  222-231  ;  his  Select 
Preachership,  ii.  226  et  seq.;  on 
Synodical  'Declaration,'  ii.  231; 
his  protest  against  Royal  Commis- 
sion on  Rubrics,  etc.,  ii.  232-235, 
361;  his  life  and  work,  ii.  237  et 
seq.,  245;  his  religious  teaching, 
ii.  239  ;  '  Lectures  on  Jewish 
Church,'  Part  H.,  ii.  246-250; 
Maurice's  criticism,  ii.  250;  obitu- 
ary notice  of  Bishop  Cotton,  ii, 
252,  356;  his  review  of  '  Ecce 
Homo,'  ii.  253-256;  member  of 
Ritual  Commission,  ii.  256;  con- 
trasts Council  at  Rome  and  Synod 
at  Lambeth,  ii.  257;  'Memorials 
of  Westminster  Abbey,'  ii.  257- 
261 ;  anniversary  and  memorial 
Q  Q  2 


596 


INDEX 


service  in  the  Abliey,  ii.  259;  his 
pamphlet  '  Connection  of  Church 
and  State,  ii.  261-263;  his  pro- 
test against  Irish  Church  Dises- 
tablishment, ii.  264;  his  support 
of  J.  S.  Mill,  ii.  265;  on  Tail's 
appointment  to  Canterbury,  ii. 
266;  his  'Address  on  the  Three 
Irish  Churches,'  ii.  267;  'Recon- 
struction of  Irish  Church,'  ii.  269; 
lectures  on '  History  of  the  Church 
of  Scotland,' ii.  271-277;  preaches 
at  Greyfriars  Church,  Edinburgh, 
ii.  272;  anecdote  of  Archbishop 
Ussher,  ii.  272;  his  speeches  in 
Convocation,  ii.  187-190,  193- 
195,  208-220,  224,  225,  230. 
1864-1881.  Westminster  Abbey,  ii. 
278-288;  his  business  incapacity, 
ii.  283;  the  Wesleys'  monument, 
ii.  284;  the  bones  of  James  I.,  ii. 
285;  Chapter  House  restored,  ii. 
287;  his  special  preachers,  ii.  288; 
Colenso's  refusal  to  preach,  ii. 
290 ;  his  correspondence  with 
Colenso  and  Tait,  ii.  292-294; 
his  protest  on  Colenso's  behalf, 
ii.  295 ;  Mission  Lectures  in  the 
Nave,  ii.  295-297;  Bach's  Pas- 
sion Music :  press  criticisms,  ii. 
298-300;  children's  services,  ii. 
300;  his  love  for  children,  ii. 
302  ;  Saturday  services  on  the 
Beatitudes,  ii.  303;  visitors  to  the 
Abbey  :  —  Queen  of  Sandwich 
Islands,  ii.  304;  Shah  of  Persia, 
Emperor  of  Brazil,  ii.  305;  M. 
Renan  (and  the  Seven  Sleepers 
of  Ephesus),  ii.  306  ;  conducts 
working-men  over  Abbey,  ii.  307- 
312;  John  Giles,  ii.  308;  George 
R.  Humphery,  ii.  310;  anecdote 
of  the  two  soldiers,  ii.  313;  his 
gifts  as  a  preacher,  ii.  315;  me- 
morial sermons  :  —  Dickens,  Sir 
John  Herschell,  Grote,  ii.  317; 
Dr.  Livingstone,  Maurice,  ii.  318; 
Kingsley,  ii.  319;  interments  in 
the  Abbey,  ii.  320  ;  Dickens's 
funeral,  ii.   322-324  ;  proposed 


monument  to  Prince  Imperial,  ii. 
324-330. 

1864-1870.  His  domestic  and  social 
life,  ii.  331,  343  et  seq.;  his 
letters  to  Lady  Augusta,  ii.  334; 
Fray  of  the  Frying-Pan,  ii.  335; 
foreign  tour,  ii.  336;  the  Rose  of 
Provins  :  Edmund  the  Crouch- 
back  and  Thibaut,  ii.  337  ;  the 
Waters  tragedy  and  his  grief:  the 
Queen's  sympathy,  ii.  338,  339; 
visits  Newman  at  the  Oratory,  ii. 
340-342;  his  daily  routine,  343  et 
seq.;  his  domestic  happiness,  ii. 
344  ;  Luther's  description  of  an 
angel,  ii.  346;  social  influence  of 
the  Deanery,  ii.  348;  visits  Queen 
of  Holland,  ii.  349;  the  Jansenist 
Archbishop,  ib.;  Empress  Augusta 
at  Baden,  ii.  350;  visits  Thirlwall 
at  Abergwili,  ii.  351  ;  Vale  of 
Towy,  ii.  352  ;  his  sermon  on 
Lord  Palmerston,  ii.  353 ;  de- 
scription of  Vallombrosa,  ii.  354- 
356;  with  Gladstone  at  Rome,  ii. 
356 ;  Monsignor  Nardi,  ii.  357  ; 
interview  with  Pius  IX.,  ii.  358; 
his  dream,  ii.  359;  Bishop  Dupan- 
loup,  ii.  360;  the  Sultan,  ii.  361 ; 
discovers  manuscript  of  prayer- 
book  of  1662,  ih.;  Thiers,  ii.362, 
363;  site  of  battle  of  Gergovia,  ii, 
363;  visits  J.  S.  Mill  at  Avignon, 
ii.  364;  in  Ireland,  ii.  365 ;  Dean 
Milman's  death,  ib. ;  German  tour : 
Queen  Isabella  of  Spain,  ii.  366; 
Prussian  Royalties  at  Baden,  ib.; 
Franco-German  war  rumours,  ii. 
367  ;  Vatican  Council,  ii.  368; 
Pere  Hyacinthe  and  Dr.  DoUinger, 
ii.  369;  Dr.  Temple's  appointment 
to  Exeter,  ii.  370-372  ;  Dr.  W. 
Bright  and  Chair  of  Ecclesiastical 
History,  ii.  372;  Thorold's  letter, 
ii.  373 ;  correspondence  with  Voy- 
sey,  ii.  375-380. 

1870-1873.  Banquet  to  Greek 
merchants :  Archbishop  Lycur- 
gus,  ii.  381;  outbreak  of  Franco- 
(jerman  War,   ii.    382;    fall  of 


INDEX 


597 


Pope's  temporal  power,  ii.  383; 
his  love  of  Scotland  and  Scott, 
ii.  384  et  seq. ;  his  friendship  with 
Bishop  Wordsworth,  ii.  393  et 
seq.;  Dean  Ramsay,  ii.  395;  his 
poetic  powers,  ii.  396  et  seq.  ; 
Beaconsfield,  ii.  397;  poem  on 
Lord  Shaftesbury,  ii.  400;  Mrs. 
Hare's  death,  ii.  401;  in  Paris, 
ii.  402;  Scott  centenary  at  Edin- 
burgh, ib. ;  at  Sedan,  ii.  403; 
Potsdam  with  Crown  Prince  and 
Princess,  ii.  404;  Old  Catholic 
Congress  at  Munich,  ii.  406;  in 
Rome,  ib.  ;  trial  of  Communists, 
ii.  407;  Prince  of  Wales'  illness: 
thanksgiving  service,  ii.  407,  408; 
Old  Catholic  Congress  at  Cologne, 
ii.  409;  Pere  Hyacinthe's  mar- 
riage, ii.  41 1,  412;  interview  with 
German  Emperor  and  Empress,  ii. 
413;  with  d'x\ubigne  at  Geneva, 
ib. ;  Lamartine's  poetry,  ii.  414; 
death  of  old  friends,  ii.  415; 
requested  by  Queen  to  celebrate 
Duke  of  Edinburgh's  marriage, 
ii.  417;  his  verses,  ii.  417-422. 
1874-1876.  Duke  of  Edinburgh's 
wedding  at  St.  Petersburg,  ii. 
422-434  ;  at  Berlin,  ii.  423,  442 ; 
at  Moscow,  438-442 ;  friendship 
with  Countess  Bloudhoff,  ii.  444 ; 
Duchess  of  Edinburgh's  arrival  at 
Windsor,  ib. ;  Beaconsfield  and 
Mr.  Gladstone  at  Marlborough 
House,  ii.  447  ;  his  walk  with 
Beaconsfield,  ii.  447,  448;  Oncken 
missions  and  persecuted  Russian 
Baptists,  ii.  449;  interview  with 
Mrs.  Besant,  ii.  451;  his  papers 
and  addresses,  ii.  453;  John  Bun- 
yan  and  Arnold,  ii.  454;  Lady 
Augusta's  illness  at  Mme.  Mohl's, 
ii.  457;  elected  Rector  of  St. 
Andrew's,  ii.  458;  his  addresses 
at  St.  .Andrew's,  ii.  459-464;  at 
Norwood,  ii.  465;  Prince  and 
Princess  of  Wales'  visit  to  Dean- 
ery, ii.  466;  the  Queen's  sym- 
pathy, ii.  467;  his  sympathy  with 


Mme.  Mohl  and  Lady  Russell, 
ii.  469;  Queen's  visit  to  Lady 
Augusta,  ii.  471;  Lady  Augusta's 
death  and  funeral,  ii.  472-474. 
1876-1880.  Effect  of  his  wife's 
death,  ii.  475;  his  faith,  ii.  478; 
his  letters  to  the  Queen,  ii.  480, 
488,  504,  508,  510,  520,  533,  542, 
544;  '  Lectures  on  Jewish  Church,' 
vol.  iii.,  ii.  481-484;  tour  in 
Portugal,  ii.  484  et  seq. ;  his 
blind  servant,  ii.  487;  memo- 
rial window  to  Lady  Augusta, 
ii.  487;  his  pride  in  her  mem- 
ory, ii.  488  et  seq. ;  lines  on 
the  '  Growth  of  a  Stonecrop 
from  the  Grave,'  ii.  488;  his 
daily  life  and  occupations,  ii. 
491  et  seq.;  Dean  Boyle's  rem- 
iniscences, ii.  494;  the  madman 
incident,  ii.  498;  revision  of  New 
Testament,  ii.  499;  his  literary 
work,  ii.  500;  the  Queen's  as- 
sumption of  Imperial  title,  ii. 
501;  Eastern  Question,  ii.  504; 
his  lectures  at  Keswick,  Bristol, 
and  Darlington,  ii.  506,  507; 
Buddhism,  ii.  507;  his  preaching 
engagements,  ii.  508;  death  of 
Motley,  Louisa  Stanley,  Sir  G. 
Scott,  and  others,  ii.  509;  visits 
America,  ii.  510-533;  Mr.  Knapp, 
ii.  513;  his  study  of  American 
History,  ii.  515;  his  interest  in 
religious  development  of  America, 
5' 7;  guest  of  Winthrop  at 
Boston,  ii.  518;  his  speeches  and 
sermon  at  Boston,  ii.  519-521; 
Salem,  ii.  522;  Bancroft's  guest  at 
Newport,  ii.  523;  Philadelphia, 
ib.  ;  the  negro  Methodists,  ii.  524; 
Washington,  New  York,  ii.  524; 
at  Irvington  with  Cyrus  Field,  ii. 
525;  Niagara,  ii.  526;  Montreal, 
Quebec,  ii.  527;  '  Inverawe  and 
Ticonderoga,'  ii.  528;  Lake 
George,  ii.  530;  at  Concord  with 
Emerson,  ii.  531;  Stockbridge 
with  Cyrus  Field,  ib. ;  New  York, 
ii.  532;  'Addresses  and  Sermons 


598 


INDEX 


in  America,'  ii.  534-542;  '  Memoir 
of  Edward  and  Catherine  Stanley, 
ii.  542;  visits  Lord  Stratford  de 
Redcliffe,  ii.  544;  foreign  tour:  at 
Milan,  ii.  545;  L.  da  Vinci's 
'  Last  Supper,'  ib. :  his  sister 
Mary's  death,  ii.  546. 
1880-1881.  His  despondency  and 
depression,  ii.  549,  551;  tour 
through  the  Channel  Islands,  ii. 
550;  Victor  Hugo's  house,  ii. 
551;  tour  in  France,  ii.  552; 
'Christian  Institutions,'  ii.  554- 
564;  letter  from  the  Queen  on 
Beaconsfield's  death,  ii.  564;  his 
last  sermon,  ii.  567;  his  illness, 
last  hours,  death,  and  funeral,  ii. 
568-572. 

Stanley,  Lady  Augusta,  i.  494;  ii. 
94,  122,  129,  139,  144,  148,  308, 
3".  333.  336,  344  seq.,  416,  422 
et  seq.,  439,  445,  456-474- 

Stanley,  Miss  Catherine.  See  Vaughan, 
Mrs.  C.  J. 

Stanley,  Captain  Charles,  i.  6,  83  et 
seq.,  267,  415. 

Stanley,  Bishop  Edward  (Norwich), 
Rector  of  Alderley,  i.  2 ;  marries 
Miss  C.  Leycester,  i.  3;  'Obser- 
vations on  Religion  and  Education 
in  Ireland,' i.  147;  appointed  Bishop, 
i.  181;  installation  sermon,  i.  181- 
186;  in  House  of  Lords,  i.  197;  on 
liturgical  revision,  i.  247;  his  death 
and  funeral,  i.  410,  411. 

.Stanley,  Mrs.  Edward,  i.  3,  8  et  seq., 
43,  58,  60,  81,  165,  429,  436;  ii.  41, 
65,  70,  72. 

Stanley,  Edward  James,  i.  156,  216. 

Stanley,  Isabella.    See  Parry,  Lady. 

Stanley,  Sir  John,  i.  5. 

Stanley,  Lord  (Sir  John  Thomas), 
i.  2. 

Stanley,  Hon.  I,ouisa,  i.  515;  ii.  137, 
139.  245,  267,  354,  401,  408,  509. 

Stanley,  Miss  Mary,  i.  6,  445,  470, 
493;  ii.  48,  55,  491.  546. 

.Stanley,  Commander  Owen,  i.  6,  20,  ! 
79-81,  415.  I 

Stanley,  Thomas  (Earl  of  Derby),  i.  I.  , 


Stanley,  Sir  Thomas  (of  Alderley),  i.  i. 
Stanley  of  Alderley,  Dowager  Lady,  ii. 
492. 

Sterling,  Rev.  John,  i.  lo8  et  seq. 
Story,  Dr.,  ii.  508,  572. 
Stoughton,  Dr.,  ii.  296,  297,  474,  572. 
Stowell,  Canon  Hugh,  ii.  288. 
Stratford  de  Redclifle,  Lord,  i.  463, 

490;  ii.  501,  544. 
Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  Lady,  ii.  553. 
Stuart,  Dr.,  ii.  403. 
Suffield,  Lord,  ii.  429. 
Sultan  of  Turkey,  ii.  360,  361. 
Sumrver,  Archbishop,  ii.  97. 
Sumner,  George,  i.  391. 
Sutakin,  Judge  Michael,  i.  518,  521, 

531;  ii.  281,  441. 
Sutakin,  Serge,  ii.  439,  440. 
Sydney,  Lord,  ii.  328. 
Symons,  Dr.,  i.  332. 
Sweden,  visit  to,  i.  51 1. 

Tam",  Archbishop  (Canterbury), i.  131, 
170;  his  advice  to  Stanley  on  Or- 
dination, i.  212;  at  Bonn,  i.  219; 
pamphlet  on  '  Professorial  System  at 
Oxford,'  i.  224,  230;  tour  with  Stan- 
ley, i.  256,  260;  on  'Tract  No.  90,' 
i.  292  et  seq.  ;  his  nickname,  i.  293; 
Head  Master  of  Rugby,  i.  317; 
member  of  O.xford  University  Com- 
mission, i.  421;  Bishop  of  London, 

i.  496;  Bryan  King  and  St.  George's- 
in-the-East,  ii.  28,  29  ;  corre- 
spondence with  Stanley,  ii.  37,  131 ; 
on  Maurice's  proposed  resignation, 

ii.  105;  on  'Subscription,'  ii.  118; 
on  Stanley  and  Westminster  Dean- 
ery, ii.  140;  on  Athanasian  Creed, 
ii.  229  ;  appointed  Archbishop,  ii. 
266;  on  Irish  Church,  ii.  269;  his 
illness,  ii.  371;  the  Voysey  case,  ii. 
374;  on  Stanley,  ii.  455;  'Memoir 
of  Catherine  and  Crauford  Tait,'  ii. 
542;  Stanley's  illness  and  death,  ii. 

569.  570- 
Talbot,  Monsignor,  ii.  358. 
;  Talleyrand,  i.  259. 
!  Taylor,  Henry,  i.  298 
,  Teesdale,  Major,  ii.  67,  87. 


599 


Temple,  Bishop  (Exeter),  ii.  30  et  seq., 

39,  289,  i^oeiseq.,  571. 
Thibaut,  the  'I'roubadour,  ii.  337. 
Thierry,  i.  472. 

Thiers,  M.,  i.  259,  404;  ii.  362,  363. 
Thirhvall,  Bishop  C.  (St.  David's),  i. 

13^^,  29o>  349;      42,  320,351,  371. 
'Ihoiiipson,  Rev.  H.  L.,  ii.  13. 
Thomson,  Archbishop  (Yorlv),  ii.  41, 

288. 

Thorold,  Bishop  (Winchester),  ii.  288, 
373- 

Thynne,  Lord  Charles,  i.  429. 
Thynne,  Lord  John,  ii.  154,  500. 
Tolstoi,  Count,  ii.  443. 
Townsend,  Colonel,  ii.  528. 
Townsend,  Mr.,  ii.  359. 
'Tract  No.  90,'  i.  291  et  seq.,  335. 
'Tracts  for  the  Times,'  i.  142. 
Trench,  Archbishop,  ii.  139. 
Trevelyan,  Sir  Charles,  i.  49. 
Tulloch,  Principal,  ii.  297,  558. 
Twells,  Rev.  H.,  ii.  289. 
Twiss,  i.  216,  297. 

Unitarians,  Stanley's  views  on,  i. 

116,  204. 
University  Reform,  i.  230,  418. 
Urusoff",  Prince,  i.  521,  527;  ii.  427, 

436. 

Ussher,  Archbishop,  ii.  244,  272. 

Vai.lombrosa,  ii.  354. 

Vatican  Council,  ii.  368. 

Vaughan,  C.  J.  (Dean  of  Llandaff  and 
Master  of  the  Temple),  Exhibitioner 
at  Rugby,  i.  69  ;  close  friendship 
•w'xih  Stanley,  i.  87  ;  reminiscences 
of  Stanley,  i.  103  ;  contributes  to 
'Rugby  Magazine,'  i.  140;  Craven 
Scholar,  i.  173;  his  Oxford  distinc- 
tions, i.  179;  '  Difference  between  a 
Hearing  and  a  Reading  Age,'  i.  187; 
candidate  for  Rugby  Head-Master- 
ship, i.  31 7 ;  marries  Miss  Stanley,  i. 
421 ;  on  Bishop  Temple,  ii.  39;  on 
.Stanley's  tour  vi'ith  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  ii.  65;  visit  from  Stanley  at 
Llandaff,  ii.  544  ;  Mary  Stanley's 
funeral,  ii.  547 ;    Stanley's  illness, 


570 ;    chief  mourner  at  Stanley's 

funeral,  ii.  572. 
Vaughan,  Mrs.  C.  J.,  i.  7;  ii.  95,  130, 

487,  492,  550. 
Vaughan,  Henry  H.,  i.  407. 
Venice,  i.  264. 
Versailles,  ii.  406. 

Victoria,  Queen,  coronation,  i.  199; 
Great  Exhibition,  i.  424;  on  Mrs. 
Stanley's  death,  ii.  70;  her  interest 
in  Stanley,  ii,  120,  121,  123,  338; 
anniversary  service  of  Prince  Con- 
sort's death,  ii.  123-125;  her  ac- 
count of  her  accession,  ii.  127;  asks 
Stanley  to  celebrate  Duke  of  Ediiv- 
burgh's  marriage,  ii.  416,  422;  her 
sympathy  with  Stanley,  ii.  467 ; 
her  visit  to  Lady  Augusta,  ii.  471 ; 
letters  from  Stanley,  ii.  480,  488, 
504,  508,  510,  520,  533,  542,  544; 
her  letter  to  Stanley  on  Beacons- 
field's  death,  ii.  564. 

Villemain,  i.  472,  493. 

Vladimir,  Grand  Duke,  ii.  434. 

Von  Humboldt,  i.  331. 

Von  Moltke,  ii.  367. 

Von  Ranke,  i.  331. 

Voyekoff,  Mdlle.,  435,  437. 

Voysey,  Rev.  Charles,  ii.  374-380. 

Wagner,  Mr.  (Hurstmonceaux),  i. 
117. 

Wales,  Prince  of,  ii.  64,  91,  125,  358, 

407,  424,  427,  428,  440,  464. 
Wales,  Princess  of,  ii.  126,  424,  440, 

464. 
Walniff,  ii.  437. 
Walrond,  Theodore,  i.  447. 
Walsch,  Madame,  i.  165. 
Ward,  H.  G.,  i.   130,  168,  187,  210, 

292,  297,  332-342. 
Ward,  Wilfrid,  i.  169. 
Washburn,  Dr.,  ii.  525. 
Washington,  Captain,  i.  480. 
Waters,  Benjamin  (Stanley's  servant), 

ii.  66,  87,  145,  338. 
Way,  Albert,  i.  476. 
Welby,  Hon.  Lady,  ii.  123. 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  i.  131,  438,  439. 
Welsh,  Dr.,  ii.  390. 


6oo 


hVDEX 


Wesley,  Charles,  ii.  244,  284. 
Wesley,  John,  ii.  284,  517,  538. 
West,  Hon.  and   Rev.   Reginald,  i. 
301. 

Westbury,  Lord,  ii.  43,  416. 
Westcott,  Bishop  (Durham),  ii.  39, 
40,  57 >• 

Westminster,  Stanley  appointed  Dean 
of,  ii.  139;  his  work  at,  ii.  145,  151, 
154.  159.  237,  278,  304,  348,  491. 

Westminster,  Duke  of,  ii.  474,  571. 

Westminster,  Marquis  of,  i.  425. 

Whalley,  Rev.  J.  P.,  i.  61. 

Whately,  Archbishop,  i.  95,  156,  246, 
320. 

Whewell,  Dr.  W.,  i.  136. 
White,  Rev.  Edward,  ii.  449. 
Wilberforce,  Bishop  (Oxford),  i.  350; 

ii-  30.  33.  289,  358,  415,  416. 
Wilkin,  Rev.  Mr.,  ii.  449. 
William  I.,  Emperor  of  Germany,  ii. 

366,  413- 
Williams,  Bishop,  ii.  529. 
Williams,  Rev.  Isaac,  i.  305. 


Williams,  Roger,  ii.  522. 
Williams,  Dr.  Rowland,  ii.  30  £•/  seq., 
43.  157- 

Williamson,  Victor,  ii.  11,  484,  508. 
Wilson,  Rev.  H.  B.,  ii.  30  et  scq.,  43, 
157- 

Wilson,  .Sir  C.  W.,  ii.  271. 
Windsor,  ii.  123,  447. 
Winthrop,  Mr.,  ii.  518. 
Wodehouse,  Canon,  i.  244,  252;  ii. 
116. 

Wood,  Mr.,  i.  21. 

Woodford,  Bishop  (Ely),  ii.  2S8. 

Wordsworth,  Bishop  Charles  (St. 
Andrews),  ii.  393  et  seq. 

Wordsworth,  Bishop  Christopher  (Lin- 
coln), i.  69,  76,  136;  ii.  151,  288, 
333.  411- 

Wordsworth,  William,  i.  100,  101,298. 
Wright,  Mr.  (Clerk  of  Works,  West- 
minster Abbey),  ii.  4S8. 
Wynter,  Dr.,  i.  175,  177. 

ZwiNGLius,  ii.  1 84,  244. 


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